06/24/2026
The Panther, The Friendship and The Space In Between
A few nights ago, I had a dream about a black panther. It hasn’t left me.
Not the kind of dream that jolts you awake in fear. Not a nightmare. Not exactly.
In the dream, I was observing the panther from a distance-sitting down with either a camera or binoculars. Next thing I knew, the panther was right next to me. Close enough to touch, close enough to feel its presence. It nuzzled against me almost like a house cat seeking affection, and yet it wasn’t a house cat. It was a panther.
As I sat there-vulnerable, I kept thinking the same thing: this beautiful thing is nuzzling up against me–this feels nice--but this animal could kill me.
What surprised me most is that I wasn’t afraid in the usual way. I didn't panic or try to get away. I was just holding two truths at once and not quite sure what to do with them.
That feeling stayed with me after I woke up. I keep turning it over, trying to understand why I didn’t pull away, why I didn’t demand clarity, why I was able to stay calm in my dream with neither certainty nor safety.
Eventually I realized the dream wasn’t really about the panther. It was about me.
Because the truth is, the most meaningful things in our lives rarely arrive clearly defined. They arrive with mixed signals. Love feels wonderful, and it can break your heart. A new opportunity feels exciting, but it can fail. A new chapter can feel full of possibility, yet still require you to let go of something familiar.
The things that make us feel most alive are many times the things that carry the most risk.
Relationships may be the clearest example of this.
Every meaningful relationship asks something of us that goes beyond time or attention. It asks for vulnerability. Friendships require us to trust another person with parts of ourselves we could easily keep hidden. Love asks even more—it asks us to care, to hope, to invest in something we cannot control or fully predict.
And this is where many of us get stuck. This is where I get stuck. Because if you’ve lived long enough, you’ve learned that people will disappoint you. They leave. They change. They misunderstand you. Sometimes they can hurt you in ways you never expected.
So without even noticing it, we start reaching for guarantees. We wait until it feels safe to open up. We wait until we’re certain we won’t be hurt. We wait until we believe we can control the outcome.
But there are no guarantees.
Loving someone always means accepting what we don’t like to admit: every real connection carries risk. Not because something is wrong, but because it is real.
There’s another risk too, and it’s quieter but just as important: misunderstanding. Every meaningful relationship eventually reaches a moment where something doesn’t land the way it was intended. A comment is taken the wrong way. Feelings get hurt. Assumptions fill in the gaps.
In those moments, we can either close down or stay open. We can decide we already know what someone meant, or we can stay curious long enough to ask. To listen. To be brave enough to be open to an explanation besides the one we first created in our mind.
Real friendship and real love require that kind of courage. Not just the courage to risk being hurt, but the courage to stay in the conversation long enough to understand if what we felt is actually what was intended.
Curiosity has a way of softening what certainty tends to harden, and over time I’ve come to believe curiosity will save more relationships than certainty ever will.
Maybe that’s why the panther felt so familiar to me. It was close, somewhat comforting, and still unsettling at the same time. And isn’t that true of the people who matter most to us?
The ones we love most also have the capacity to hurt us—not because they intend to, but because they matter. Their absence matters. Their words matter. Their choices matter. And yet we still choose connection anyway, not because it is safe, but because it is worth it.
The panther in my dream never promised safety. It simply offered its presence.
And maybe that’s the point. At some stage in life, courage stops being about eliminating fear and is more about learning how to stay present-- without guarantees. And-- about letting something beautiful be close, even when you know you can’t control it.
When I think about the dream now, I’ve stopped wondering whether the panther would have hurt me. Thanks to talking it out-- I now wonder what it was asking me to notice. Not whether it could be trusted, but whether I could stay open. Would I- Could I choose curiosity instead of fear when both were available?
The panther never spoke. It didn’t need to. Its message was in its presence.
Some things in life will always be both beautiful and dangerous. The real win isn’t to remove the risk. It’s to stay curious enough to remain anyway.
