On Saturday my daughters and I went down to the river with their ponies and our dog, Ernie.

As we were walking along, the girls on their ponies and me on my legs, I heard a woman screaming. It was a sound of absolute terror. I looked over to see what was happening and I saw a woman grabbing her kids and rushing to their car. As she did this the kids started screaming.

I looked around for the gunman, but I couldn’t see any danger! Then I realised she was looking at Ernie who was about 20 metres away from them meandering along minding his own business. I put Ernie on his lead, and she began to calm down.

“Who would be scared of Ernie?’, my daughters asked.

Good question; because we aren’t born innately scared of anything.

This woman was obviously terrified of dogs. Her kids will likely be terrified of dogs because they’ll learn that from her. She’s probably terrified because one of her parents was terrified of dogs…

99% of our likes and dislikes, our fears and passions, are probably not ‘us’ at all, they are just learned patterns. We are just blindly running patterns and calling them ‘us’.

So, who am I?