When a lion is just a cub, it spends a lot of time fighting with its siblings,.. practicing,.. training. Most of a lion’s adult life is spent killing animals that are no match for it and sleeping in the shade of a tree. Occasionally, a lion is tested by a worthy adversary,.. an equal. And without thought or preparation the lion draws on all the experience it had fighting as a cub.

She spent years training in the martial art of karate. She enjoyed the exercise and valued the confidence it gave her, but she doubted she would ever need it. She finished school, set to advancing in her career, and the time she spent training diminished,.. then stopped. One evening, after working late, she was attacked in the parking garage. There was no time to think. All reflexes and muscle memory. As the assailant limped away, bloody and disorientated, she dialed 911 and began the mental exercise of reorganizing her daily schedule to include karate training again.

During a rare moment of peace he sat on his porch enjoying a little tobacco and thinking about his state of affairs. A few years ago hard times hit the whole world like a hammer and settled in. Everyone had to scramble to survive. It had been a rough ride, but their community fared better than most others. From his perspective there is only one reason: with no time to think or plan people had to rely on reflexes and conditioned behavior… He and his wife were both born and raised in this traditional community by traditional parents. Here, the boys are raised to be men and the girls are raised to be women, and there are very well established rules for how people interact. Over the years they had received more and more pressure to change, and felt more and more bullied and isolated. He was now very happy that they resisted the pressure.