Fire + Ice
The rollercoaster of 2025 has begun.
2025 promises to be a year of big changes and the first two weeks have lived up to that promise.
Fire + Ice keeps coming to mind, with southern California burning down and icy arctic air descending upon the United States of America.
We sit on this Bardo, waiting for a new administration to take office, questions about current leadership and what is next on the horizon.
Veterinary medicine is in its own vwrsion of turmoil. So many new pharmaceuticals are hitting the market it is nearly impossible to keep up with it all. Injectable forms of Bravecto, a pesticide that kills fleas and ticks and causes seizures. Injectable Apoquel that stops the itch but induces multiple forms of cancer.
How do I know they do these things? There are warnings in the fine print on the box and in the package insert. But no one reads anymore. They don’t have time because they are busy scrolling on social media operated by a person who is trying to convince us he is “all for free speech” after he spent 4 years censoring, blocking, removing posts that contained the word “vaccine”.
It is up to us, as individuals, to inform ourselves, to do the research, to look beyond our newsfeeds and the social chatter so we can make decisions that might very well be life saving, for us, for our animals, and our loved ones.
Back to fire + ice. These are elements, the energetic building blocks of the material world we find ourselves in. The 5 elements of Taoism are interdependent, relating to one another in cycles: the creation cycle, the control cycle, and, when things get really out of balance and wonky, the destructive cycle. It is the reverse of the control cycle, kind of like throwing on the brakes of a race car , spinning it around to go the other direction. Instead of Water putting out Fire, Fire turns Water to steam. Water washes away Earth, creating mudslides. Earth buries Wood, plants and trees. Wood overgrows Metal, and Metal smothers Fire.
We have pushed things so far in one direction, we have entered this “insulting cycle”.
Insulting cycle: Earth insults Wood (a devastating earthquake), Water insults Earth (over-flooding destroys land), Wood insults Metal (over-forestation robs the earth of minerals), Metal insults Fire (weapons of war destroy production), Fire insults Water (excessive heat dries up river beds).
What can we do? Take care of ourselves. Ground ourselves in the immediate environment we find ourselves. Center ourselves in our hearts and extend compassion to all sentient beings.
The one thing for certain is that nothing lasts forever amd things will never stop changing.