How To Teach A Bear Respect

I was watching one of those animal nature shows last night about bears; you know those furry giants among men. Every time we hear about bears, it’s either funny or tragic, there is no in between.

We hear how Godzilla-like bears terrorize picnickers and how they vandalize cars to get food. We see how they wind up in a homeowners backyard because they lost their way home and we are amazed at how they get up those trees but somehow can’t find their way down?

Of course from a bear’s perspective, the argument flips. We don’t hear that a bear took his family on a nice picnic in the park and was suddenly interrupted by humans.

We can’t see that a bear just may be in the lotus position meditating before we so rudely interrupted him/her, frightening the bear into the attack mode. (That’s why they meditate, so those little human annoyances won’t catch them off guard.)

Some bears are even are convicts. One bear in Macedonia was found guilty of theft and criminal damage for repeatedly raiding a beekeeper's hives.

Anyway in the show, there was a bear terminator; a diminutive blonde woman who was called out every time a bear was seen in a human area.

Unlike her screen doppelgänger, Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, she wasn’t a cyborg and she wasn’t hunting humans. She was there to protect humans and bears and she did so by terminating the bears proximity to humans.

Though she didn’t have the bulging muscles of a champion body builder, you could see in her eyes that she was fearless. She would get a bear call, jump into her truck and approach the grizzly bear in an incredible act of courage. She then raised her hands over her head and let out a loud (((grrrrroooooowl.)))

The bear reacted like it had seen a ghost and quickly retreated back into the safety of the forest.

When the woman was questioned on why she did this, she replied, “In my mind I become the grizzly. I become bigger than them. I have to teach them some respect.”

The grizzly is the most aggressive of all the bears, it has no enemies or predators. It rarely fights and when he does, it usually wins. That’s why it was amazing to see a bear run away from a little woman.

I realized that bears and people are very similar; we eat the same kind of food (we're both omnivores), bears can eat up to 15% of their body weight in one day, men can drink up to 15% of their body weight in one hour. Bears and people are competitive, curious and can stand on two legs, (that is if we’re not drunk.)

In defining how to teach a bear respect, we first have to define the bear. A bear can be aggressive, stubborn, hungry, angry, violent, deadly, afraid, strong, vulnerable, etc.

A bear can also be a metaphor for something scary, uncomfortable, potentially dangerous, deep-seated emotions, or facing your demons; it represents the unknown and that’s what’s scary for people. It’s not like a bear is a small animal. It is voluminous.

So how can we tackle this beast within us? We have to start by identifying what represents a bear to us and then concentrating on facing the fear. We have to be bigger than it. We have to metaphorically growl and keep it away for good.

Communicating what we want to the right people can start the ball rolling to getting what we want; be it assistance, guidance or taking time for ourselves to discover what we want or what is missing?

In teaching the bear respect, we discover that we ARE the bear and we are really teaching ourselves self-respect. When we have self-respect, it is a testament to our character. We are teaching others to respect us by standing up for ourselves, not tolerating mistreatment from others, loving ourselves and honoring our presence.

We soon find out that life is a bounty which supplies more than the “bear” necessities. Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one.