Lessons from Maggie

It seems like so much has been happening lately that there hasn’t been anything to say. And now today, I feel so full of ideas that I don’t even know which one to write about. So I’ll choose the most current occurrence, which is spending about forty-five minutes looking for my dog, Maggie. Usually we take her out on a leash, even though we don’t really need to, because she is a terrier and cannot resist chasing a squirrel if she sees one. Today we went on our usual Wednesday car ride to the grocery store—as usual, she followed me up the stairs while I carried the bags. Great. Then I had to make a second trip and thought she might as well get a bit more exercise and come with me, but this time she didn’t follow me up the stairs and by the time I got back down there, she was nowhere to be found. Argh.

I was mad at her, mad at me, had all kinds of thoughts about how I shouldn’t have done that, should have known better, was wasting my time. Part of me could recognize that things just happen, that the last forty times we’ve gone to the store Maggie hasn’t run off, that it was a lovely day to be walking around, but the other part of me was just annoyed. I have been realizing lately that I just try to get rid of “negative” feelings more than I would like to admit. Intellectually, I know it’s o.k. to feel them, but a big part of me still doesn’t want to and tries to rationalize myself out of them by saying things like, “There’s nothing you can do about it. Just enjoy being outside.” It’s tricky because that is true, but it can be also used to squash emotions that are also true.

So I was walking around looking for Maggie sort of flipping back and forth. There’s a difference between allowing feelings to be there and egging them on. Just thinking the thoughts about how things should be different and I want to be doing something else is neither feeling the feelings nor finding my way to a more objective witness place—it's really just egging on. After the fact, I can see that the missing step was experiencing the sensations of frustration in my body. I can do that without “thinking” at all. In this way, I can stay in the truth (satya) of my experience without indulging or denying (which happens in the head). I guess I need more practice.

Just in case you were wondering, Maggie came strolling up with our neighbor looking super-dirty. Her little beard and feet were all blackish and she had all kinds of burrs and leaves and twigs in her fur. It would seem she was off on a big adventure being a dog while I was wandering around struggling with being a human.