Animal Instinct

There are moments when life changes without warning.

You can be sitting somewhere, doing something ordinary, drinking tea, thinking about nothing important, and suddenly a fear enters your mind. Nothing around you has changed, but inside you something has moved. The world feels less safe than it did a few seconds ago.

Animal Instinct makes me think about that kind of fear.

It is strange how loving someone can make you stronger and more frightened at the same time. Before they become important to you, the world has fewer ways to hurt you. Then one person arrives, and suddenly their safety matters as much as your own.

Maybe even more.

I understood this much better after becoming a father.

Before children, I thought protection was mostly a practical idea. You keep someone away from danger. You make sensible decisions. You try to prevent bad things from happening.

Then you have a child and discover that protection is not completely rational.

Sometimes you look at them when they are sleeping and feel an unexpected fear. They are perfectly safe. Nothing is wrong. Still, your mind quietly begins creating disasters that do not exist.

You want to stop all of them.

You cannot.

That is one of the difficult lessons of being a parent.

You can hold a small hand while crossing the street. You can check the doors at night. You can give advice, solve problems and try to create a safe home. But eventually you understand that you cannot control reality.

The world will reach the people you love.

They will be disappointed. They will fail at something. Somebody will hurt them. They will make decisions you would not make. One day they will walk through a door without your hand in theirs.

Knowing this does not stop the instinct to protect them.

Perhaps that is why the word “instinct” fits so well.

There is a kind of love that arrives before thought. You do not calculate it. You do not decide whether it is reasonable. Your body seems to understand it before your mind does.

If something happens, you move.

If they are afraid, you become calm.

If somebody threatens them, a different version of you appears.

I think most parents eventually meet that version of themselves.

The song also reminds me that love creates doubt. When something matters deeply, certainty becomes difficult. You begin asking questions you cannot answer. Am I doing enough? Am I protecting too much? Should I help, or should I let them learn alone?

There is no perfect answer.

Sometimes protecting somebody also means allowing them to experience the world without you.

That may be the hardest part.

When children are small, holding their hand is easy. Years later, love asks for something more difficult: knowing when to let go.

Not because you care less.

Because you trust them more.

I suppose this instinct never really disappears. The form changes, but the feeling remains. A child grows taller, becomes independent, develops a life you cannot completely see, and still some part of you remembers the small hand.

Maybe that is what I hear in Animal Instinct.

Love is beautiful partly because it gives us something worth protecting.

It is frightening for exactly the same reason.