I was walking up the back stairwell when I noticed one of my cats trying to get in the back door. I paused, realizing that this was out of character for my cat. I put down the things I was carrying and opened the back door to let my cat inside. I looked around to ensure that no other animals were in the yard scaring him but saw nothing. My body felt uneasy, there was a tightness in my chest, and I recognized this tightness as my body trying to talk to me.
He came running inside, so I shut the door and continued up the stairs. As I climbed the stairs, something felt off to me. Why was the cat at the back door? That just wasn’t like him.
As I finished my cleaning upstairs, I walked back down the stairs and to the front side of the house. As I walked through the kitchen, I noticed that the door that goes onto the 3 season porch was closed. This was the door that the cats typically came to when they wanted to come back inside. It allowed them to get under shelter and wait for us to see them by the french glass doors. I smiled, realizing why he had gone to another door, and felt the uneasiness in my body melt away. I walked out onto the porch, opened the door, and placed a rock in front of the door to keep it from blowing shut in the wind. He had an unmet need, to come in, and he simply found another way to meet the need. As I walked back from the porch into the house, I reached down and patted him, thinking about how smart he was in figuring out another way to get my attention to come inside.
Later that day, while in meditation, the experience came back to me. I knew my cat's behavior well and knew that his coming to the back door was out of character and that something was off. People are no different; when they do something out of character, there is usually something off or wrong, and yet so frequently, we focus on their behavior rather than trying to understand what is off or wrong. What if, rather than focusing on the behavior, we started focusing on the unmet need? Now, this isn’t to say that we should tolerate poor behavior, but maybe we should give people the benefit of the doubt and be curious about the unmet need rather than focusing on blaming. How different would our world be if we started getting curious about unmet needs rather than pointing a finger at behavior?