Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw
People often tell me:
"Danny... when they made you, they broke the mold."
Well, I’m here to tell you... they didn’t break the mold.
Apparently they used it again.
I love my brother Tom. He’s twelve years younger than me, and I’ve known him for about sixteen years.
Now some of you may be doing the math right now with raised eyebrows thinking:
"Wait... what’s the story there???"
I’m going to leave that part in suspense for another time.
But let’s just say that when Tom and I met and got to know each other, I started seeing something very familiar.
And that’s where our story begins...
On the influential and powerful forces of nature and nurture.
Let’s begin with nature.
When we look at nature in this context, we’re looking at the qualities within us that seem inherent — the things that are present from the beginning, the things that hold a strong sway over us.
Not necessarily the way we look, although that can certainly play a part.
I’m talking about the qualities that seem woven into us. The parts of ourselves that can feel almost like birthrights.
Some aspects of our nature may be flexible and shaped over time. We can smooth out some of the ruts, soften some of the hard edges, and learn new ways of being.
But there are also parts of us that run so deep that changing them would feel like swimming against the tides of our own existence.
Human nature...
Tell me why, why...
Oh Michael, you knew what you were talking about.
I love my brother Tom because I see myself in him.
The nature in us feels indelible.
As Tom and I have grown closer over the years and reflected back on our completely separate upbringings, we discovered an underlying current that followed both of us:
Joy.
Playfulness.
A tendency to see the good first.
Now before we get all teary-eyed over this wonderful story of two brothers, two peas in a pod, two twelve-years-apart clones...
I mean, this isn’t a Hallmark movie...
Although honestly, it could be.
Let’s jump back to the ducks from last week.
Many of you wrote back about the sweetness of that story, and a few of you even shared some of your own duck tales.
But there was another part of that story that stayed with me.
There’s a line from Tennyson that I’ve loved for a long time:
Nature, red in tooth and claw.
There’s also a Sting song — bonus points if you know the song and album — where he sings:
"In nature's red in tooth and claw,
Like winter's freeze and summer thaw,
The wounds she gave me were the wounds that would heal me."
Wait! Stop right there.
Pause.
Reflect.
The wounds she gave me were the wounds that would heal me.
Is that true?
Have you ever had emotional wounds... mental wounds... physical wounds... that eventually taught you something?
Now let me be clear — when you're going through it, it can feel horrible.
You can find yourself asking:
"Why me?"
And people sometimes hand us those well-intended phrases like:
"The Lord only gives you what you can handle."
And if I’m being honest...
sometimes you just want to lovingly slap somebody when they say that.
But when enough time passes and you step back, sometimes you realize:
"I could never have learned that without having gone through it."
Nature can be harsh.
The drive to feed, shelter, survive, and protect runs through the entire chain of life.
And sometimes nature can feel cruel.
But there is also wisdom moving through it.
A herd of deer learns where danger lives.
They learn which watering holes are safe and which places to avoid.
That wisdom gets passed along.
And often it gets passed along through hardship.
Last week Sarah and I watched a mother duck living into her nature as she cared for ten little ducklings.
She was doing exactly what a mother is wired to do — protect, shelter, and care for her family.
At first they seemed to have found a safe little place.
Private.
Sheltered.
Protected.
But we began realizing something else.
Much of the food that supports a growing duck family comes from water sources full of things we might not necessarily want to swim in ourselves:
Algae.
Bugs.
Little pieces of life moving beneath the surface.
Not clean chlorinated water.
Not still water.
Living water.
Sarah and I started noticing that some of the ducklings appeared weaker.
And later she sadly told me that some of them had passed away.
There it was again:
Nature, red in tooth and claw.
Cute little ducklings passing away.
Sarah tried giving them food.
Because that's what love does.
Love wants to help.
Love wants to protect.
But nature had a different lesson unfolding.
But there was more happening here.
Even though that mother duck was acting within her nature to protect and shelter her family, there was something else on the property acting within its own nature.
Enter Cookie the cat - (cue ominous music)
Now we had convinced ourselves that a fifteen-year-old cat surely didn’t have much fire left in her.
"Cookie isn't hunting anything."
Apparently Cookie had other ideas.
And in her own natural way, she began bringing us little gifts one after another.
I’m sure many of you know the kinds of gifts I’m talking about — especially if you've ever had an outdoor cat.
So how could we get mad at Cookie for doing what Cookie was born wanting to do?
And there it was again:
Nature, red in tooth and claw.
Cookie wasn't being cruel.
Cookie wasn't being evil.
Cookie was being Cookie.
Now back to Tom and me.
Because when nurture supports nature, something beautiful begins to happen.
When we talk about nurture, we're talking about environment.
How did we grow up?
What emotional, physical, and mental conditions surrounded us as children?
What habits and patterns did we inherit?
What traditions and rituals shaped us?
How was love shown to us...
Or not shown?
Tom and I shared a father.
And like many of us, he carried beautiful qualities and also carried things he was still working through.
As Tom and I grew closer and developed a deeper understanding of one another, we realized something fascinating.
Even though we had grown up separately, we kept finding ourselves returning to similar places.
We noticed certain habits.
Certain judgments.
Certain ways of seeing ourselves and seeing the world.
We found ourselves aligning with people and situations that sometimes kept us living within self-limiting patterns.
Similar struggles.
Different expressions.
And yet underneath all of that...
There was still joy.
There was still faithfulness.
There was still a tendency to see the good first.
Those things seemed to keep resurfacing no matter what life had layered on top of us.
And I began realizing something:
Maybe the deepest parts of our nature have a force of their own.
I truly believe there are qualities within us that are not absent — only forgotten.
Joy.
Love.
Peace.
Compassion.
The ability to see the good.
Not gone.
Not destroyed.
Not removed.
Sometimes simply buried beneath layers of fear, survival, hurt, conditioning, and all of the ways life shapes us.
Because let’s be honest...
No matter how wonderful or difficult our upbringing may have been, I would venture to say that every one of us has been shaken a little.
Life leaves fingerprints on us.
Sometimes footprints.
Sometimes it feels more like somebody showed up with heavy boots.
And yet beneath all of that...
There still remains something.
Something peaceful.
Something loving.
Something deeply human.
Those qualities don't necessarily appear on their own.
They take remembering.
They take attention.
They take cultivation.
They take watering.
Because even though our nature may always be present, sometimes we forget where we placed our attention.
So Cookie...
Thank you for bringing the gifts that are within your nature.
Tom...
Thank you for bringing the gifts that are within your nature.
And thank you for something else.
Because as we grew closer, I began realizing something:
Nature can strengthen nature.
As Tom and I stayed connected and shared life together, those qualities that already existed within us — joy, faithfulness, seeing the good — began growing stronger.
Love strengthened love.
Patience strengthened patience.
Conviction strengthened conviction.
When one of us felt low, the other helped remind us of what was already there.
Not by creating something new...
But by helping uncover something that had always existed.
Sarah, my beautiful wife...
Thank you for bringing the gifts that are within your nature.
And to the beautiful family that raised me and gave me all the love they could...
Thank you for helping me recognize my own nature.
And you too...
Take delight in your nature.
Because I believe many of us can become overwhelmed by our circumstances and our situations.
There are times when we become stressed, depleted, under-resourced, and dysregulated.
There are moments where life becomes so loud that we lose touch with something quieter beneath it all.
We forget.
We forget the nature within us.
And maybe that brings us back to the Sting line:
"The wounds she gave me were the wounds that would heal me."
Because perhaps it is through recognizing where we suffer that we come closer to recognizing our humanity.
Closer to recognizing our nature.
Beneath the wounds...
Beneath the conditioning...
Beneath the tooth and claw...
There is still something in us remembering.
Something peaceful.
Something loving.
Something deeply human.
And perhaps our deepest nature has been there all along...
waiting patiently for us to remember.
Cause you make me feel...
Like a natural human.
Danny
The Emotional Driver
“Emotion Is the Note. You Are the Song.”
