We have an active 1-year old puppy with a high level of energy and an even higher metabolism. She has developed into a tirelessly enthusiastic frisbee player, an avid hiker and a joyful walking companion. And she has a sweet tooth that none of my previous dogs had. She’s never met a pup cup she didn’t love.
For those who aren’t familiar with pup cups, it’s basically soft-serve ice cream served in a dog-friendly cardboard cup, usually with a small dog bone on top. Our pup pulls that right out of the way and devours her ice cream treat. The bone is inevitably buried for later wherever she can hide it. Just the good stuff for the pup.
The thing is, I also like ice cream or gelato, but throwing the frisbee isn’t burning the same amount of calories as chasing it does, so more often than not she’s enjoying her treat while I watch. If you want to see a highly-focused individual in action, watch a puppy lick a pup cup to oblivion. There’s no distraction when it comes to ice cream. In fact, anyone who struggles with living in the moment ought to consider adopting a dog. Every day brings a lesson in the delight of now.
“The price of greatness is responsibility over each of your thoughts.” ― Winston Churchill
Yesterday, in a clear break from discipline, I took the dog to the beach for a long walk. I collected smooth stones until my coat pocket was full and stuffed a few more into my pants pockets. The pup—her tail wagging furiously—greeted other dog walkers and sniffed the salty foam. I might have been more productive pushing through some report or calling a few customers, but the pup and I agreed this was the most productive lunch meeting I’ve had in a long time.
We know, deep down, when we’ve done our best. So many people go through the motions nowadays, not really finding the magic in the moment in their work. Not really feeling the power of contribution to something bigger than themselves. As if our days are infinite. As if staying within ourselves isn’t a betrayal of our potential.
Betrayal of potential is doing work that doesn’t matter to us for a beat longer than absolutely necessary. I post this blog every day because it speaks to me, and I speak through it. Like flossing, when you diligently do it every day you get a positive outcome. Shouldn’t our primary work be the same?
What does it matter to you? When you got a job to do You got to do it well You got to give the other fellow hell — Paul McCartney, Live and Let Die
We have no time for trivial pursuits. We have no time for work that doesn’t resonate, that doesn’t make us feel something essential within ourselves. If today were our last day on earth, would the work we are doing mean a thing? To borrow from Derek Sivers, if the answer isn’t a hell yes, it’s a no. How many no’s do we want to stack in a row? Make today a yes and start a new kind of streak.
Walking on the beach yesterday was an expression of yes. It was walking away from a no and making the most of a fragile moment. The work was still there when I got back, but it felt different than it did earlier in the day. It turned out the work wasn’t the problem, it was the worker all along.
“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait until that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.” ― Henry David Thoreau
They say a tired dog doesn’t dig, but I have a dog that never tires. This mild, wet winter has given her ample opportunity to perfect her digging technique. And so the next few days I’ll be spreading enough stone to pay for a trip to Paris. Mulching the beds with stone is meant to act as a natural deterrent for a wonderful (really) dog who wants to dig holes everywhere. It’s a way of telling her, “not here”. With time and some training, eventually she’ll grow out of these teenage years.
We know when something has shifted within ourselves and it’s time for change. Do we leap at that moment, or live a life of quiet desperation? Thoreau famously suggested most of us do the latter. It’s famous because it resonated with the masses, who fail to act on the wisdom in the observation. We must have the agency to go. To do that we must have the courage to let go of the things that hold us in place.
Easier said than done. That puppy who has brought so much joy into our lives is also an anchor to a lifestyle. Having the agency to go on a trip is one thing, but the more we layer into our lives the harder it is to simply walk away. Great lifestyle design means layering in the things we want most in our lives and eliminating the things that aren’t as important. The dog stays, and so the trip to Paris may be pushed out yet another year. We can’t have it all, but we can have the things we focus on the most.
Don’t get me wrong—there will be plenty of travel to come this year, and with it arrangements for dog sitting and lawn mowing and all the things that come with balancing priorities. There’s a price tag for all of this, in time and money and the discipline to see it through. The payoff is a life far richer than it might have been otherwise. Filling in holes was the entire reason we got the dog in the first place.
“Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.” — Bertolt Brecht
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” — Marcus Aurelius
Recently, a colleague from overseas asked for some advice on where to go and what to do for a weekend in Boston. Answering this question is both easy and challenging. Oftentimes we are so caught up in the familiar routine that we forget to explore the things that make a place special. Go to the museums, take a walk through the Public Garden or the Esplanade, and definitely try the oysters, I told her, but it reminded me that I ought to take my own advice and step off the usual loop more often myself.
If we crave anything in our average days, it’s more boldness. But to be bold in the face of an abundance of adequate choices a good life throws our way seems ungrateful—when life is good, why be so audacious as to turn it upside down? Does taco Tuesday really ever get old? Only when we question it. At that moment, we realize there can be more to a random weekday than the same thing we had last Tuesday.
One might think taking the dog for a walk is mundane. I beg to differ! Every walk with a dog is a perspective changing event. Lately we’ve been walking the dog in a new place every weekend. Different beaches, woodland walks, rail trails. Every place is different for the dog, and different for us when viewed through the eyes and nose of an eager pup. In every walk we experience something new ourselves, and expand our lives in the process. It’s why we opted to adopt a rescue dog in the first place, because life is larger when we wrap more people, pets and places around ourselves.
When viewed through the lens of a brief life, our choices in the everyday feel more essential. We can’t celebrate wine o’clock all day without flushing our vitality down the drain, but we can surely seek out the exclamation point in an otherwise mundane moment. Try a different walk or visit that museum we recommend to others but never seem to get to ourselves. Maybe even skip the tacos for once and try a donburi bowl. Sure, it’s not as alliterative, but it offers a whole new taste for Tuesday. The whole world awaits the adventurous spirits who venture out into it. So be bold in those choices today.
There are different ways to walk a beach. Some walks are meditative, some are merely workouts, and some are clearly meant for people-watching. The reasons why we walk lead us eventually to where and when. Each beach offers a new lens through which we may see the world and ourselves.
My bride is a beach bunny at heart, and it turns out our pup is too. We’ve been taking her to a local New Hampshire beach for long walks and she’s grown more courageous with each bold step. She’s no water dog and won’t plunge in like our Labrador retriever would, but she’ll delightfully chase waves and bite at the sea foam. Her joy is ours, and walks on the beach have become a more frequent way of getting her away from the permanent mud season of never-winter-as-it-once-was that is our new reality.
If Hampton Beach is a long, flat walk on firm sand, Plum Island Beach offers an experience more like Cape Cod National Seashore: soft dune sand plunging steeply in places to the ocean breakers. The dunes aren’t nearly as tall as Cape Cod, but the walk can be just as wonderful. On one end is the turbulent mouth of the Merrimack River, on the other are the dunes and swirling sandbars of Plum Island State Park reaching out into Ipswich Bay. In between are rows of homes ranging from beach shacks to McMansion: beach edition luxury homes. As with everywhere exclusive, money determines the future state of the real estate here. But Mother Nature has a say too.
Plum Island is not an easy place to walk nor an easy place to live compared to other beaches in the area. Just as wealthy homeowners in the Hamptons on Long Island struggle with beach erosion and the fickle protectiveness of sand dunes, the people who dare to build homes on Plum Island face the same challenges. One day you’re living in paradise, the next you’re living through a nightmare of storm surge and wave action. It’s an audacious act to live in such places, emphasized with insurance rates that discourage the casual investor. It takes disposable income to have such homes in such places as this.
Plum Island State Park prohibits dogs, so a walk to the end with the pup was out of the question, but there was plenty of beach available for our power trio. Walking towards the Merrimack River, we met a couple walking three dogs of their own. As soon as they said their dog’s name I knew it was a locally-famous author but kept it to myself. We all seek out the beach for our own reasons, and often it’s to get away from who we are further inland. We had a small reunion on the return and went our separate ways.
Every beach has its own story to tell, just as each beach walker does. I wonder sometimes why we aren’t walking more beaches, and promised myself to add beaches to the collection of mountain summits, waterfalls and historic sites I’m collecting on my life experience list. The time bucket for such activity is now, isn’t it? We must venture out while we’re blessed with good health and a desire to do something with it. Perhaps we’ll see you out there too?
“Health lies in action, and so it graces youth. To be busy is the secret of grace, and half the secret of content. Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them. In Utopia, said Thoreau, each would build his own home; and then song would come back to the heart of man, as it comes to the bird when it builds its nest. If we cannot build our homes, we can at least walk and throw and run; and we should never be so old as merely to watch games instead of playing them. Let us play is as good as Let us pray, and the results are more assured.” — Will Durant, Fallen Leaves
Health lies in action. We know the drill: sitting is the new smoking. We must get up and move, and not just move, but delight in moving. To play is to live. Life is full enough of tedious moments, don’t you think? Our exercise ought to be fun.
For me walking is a more fun form of exercise than just about anything save paddling or rowing. Walking in places that inspire and awe is wondrous, and ought to be a regular part of our routine, but sometimes a simple walk around the block is enough to reset the soul and stir the blood. Sometimes we focus so much on the spectacular or the glory of the summit that we forget the benefits of the activity itself. We must move, and glory in the act itself.
This past weekend I’d contemplated a hike. Knock off a couple of summits that were particularly evasive for me on the list for one reason or another. When you hear the call of the wild you ought to listen, but sometimes that call is a siren. It was treacherously cold in the mountains, the kind of cold that will ruin a perfectly good day for the prepared, or kill the unprepared. Not exactly the play I was craving: lists be damned. So instead of a 4000 footer I opted for sea level and a January beach walk. Also bitingly cold, but distinctly more accessible. It also offered an easy opportunity to simply bail out and get back into a warm car (or bar) if needed.
My bride and our pup are both beach bunnies at heart. Off-season walks on the beach are their kind of play, and mine too. I can spend all day at the beach so long as I’m not lying still like something that washed up. Surf speaks to me almost as much as summits do, and I view a great walk on a long beach as delightful as any walk can be.
We chose Hampton Beach, New Hampshire for our off-season walk. We wanted to take stock of the damage from the winter storms last week, and to have a long stretch of beach sand. That biting cold ensured few people would brave the exposure of the beach, so our only company were other dog walkers and a few determined metal detector miners looking for lost riches. We each chase the American dream in our own way, and everyone needs a hobby.
We should never be so old as merely to watch games instead of playing them. The trick is to stay in the game. To play in the sand is just as fun as playing king of the mountain. Just move, and delight in the company of others. That’s a simple recipe for a great life.
January at Hampton Beach. Lot’s of footprints in snow, few people.Winter means walking in brisk solitude
I’ve had many snowstorms in my lifetime. Blizzards and lake effect dumpings, heavy wet snows and light and fluffy snow globe snows, white-outs that scare the heck out of you and ever-lasting slow drifts that barely seem to pile up. You tend to grow used to it after awhile, but that first snow of the year is always magical. Having a few mild winters in a row, and snow this year taking forever to reach the part of New Hampshire I reside in, it just began to feel like we’d never get another good storm. So there’s delight when if finally arrives, tinged with calculations about cleanup, road conditions, viability of the power lines and how much bread and milk one might consume before it all spoils.
This first snow brings with it the perspective of a puppy, just nine months old, experiencing a heavy accumulation for the very first time. Now this in itself is appointment watching, as she steps timidly outside at this new world awaiting her, sniffs and licks at the white blanket and slowly steps ever deeper. My own obligations took a back seat as I watch her figure it all out. Eventually she grew bolder and began walking more quickly, and then in a spark of instinct or insight, began to prance like a deer through the drifts, ever faster. Soon she was running about the yard like it was her best day ever, and who was I to argue?
The thing about heavy snow days is you learn to time the cleanup, that you aren’t out in it all day long, but you aren’t letting it accumulate so much that it’s difficult to work with. There’s an efficiency to snow cleanup that is learned through experience. Whatever the perfect moment is, it feels like the entire neighborhood decides to go out at the same time. The nods and waves and getting back to the business at hand inevitably follow, like some scripted scene from a pharmaceutical company’s drug du jour commercial. We’re all keeping an eye on each other in a way, even as we mind our own business.
With all the responsibility of adulthood, sometimes we get caught up in the cleanup and calculations, and forget to just play in the snow. A new puppy, like children, teach us to delight in the wonder of a fresh snowfall. To roll about in it and clop through it and fly across it laughing at the sheer magic of the changed landscape. The cleanup is never the fun part, but we ought to remember the do fun part in our rush to clean up. Life deserves more magic and delight, don’t you think?
“A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.” — Mary Oliver, Her Grave
Walking the pup the last few nights, I’m reminded of what hides in plain sight from us. Rabbits standing still, waiting out the passersby. Other dog walkers, faces glowing in rapt attention to the phone while their dog cries for attention, if not from her leash mate, then perhaps from us. A phone ruins night vision immediately, but that’s not the only sense ruined. Awareness is a fragile thing, stolen away in an instant.
Some things still scare the pup, even as she approaches nine months. She’s a teenager now, as dog years go, and most things don’t scare her on the surface. When she grows timid I pay extra attention, wondering what in the night draws her in so. A good flashlight usually reveals nothing but shadows. The pup knows better.
The walks were what I missed most about having a dog. Dogs force a break from the comfort of the home, and pull us outside to engage with the world. Where we learn to be more aware. To confront our own senses and what we miss when we’re not fully present. Like poetry, sometimes the smallest thing means everything in this lifetime.
Last night I got to experience something for the very first time. The pup, now eight months old and keenly observant of all that moves in her kingdom, spotted an opossum nibbling on fallen birdseed a second before me. It seems opossums don’t run nearly as fast as an excited mutt. The gap was closed in an instant and the pup was on top of the opossum before I could reach her. Sure enough, the opossum looked like road kill with its tongue halfway out the mouth and twisted oddly out of wack. It looked like a crime scene minus the blood. The dog thankfully lost interest right away and began sniffing around for something else nearly as exciting. Suspecting our newfound neighbor was faking it, I got the dog inside the house and took her for a walk on the street instead. After the walk I took the flashlight out to investigate and sure enough, the opossum had awoken from its tonic immobility and moved on to safer places.
Tonic immobility is an automatic reflex to high stress situations. It’s playing dead, but without the playing. The opossum wasn’t just lying there with its eyes closed and mouth open, it was unconscious for a period of time to allow the danger to disappear. Puppies like squeaky toys. When the toy didn’t squeak the pup looked for something more fun to chase. The Wikipedia link above is informative, and points to all sorts of creatures who go into a state of tonic immobility when they’re stressed.
Humans can also reach a similar state when fainting. I once watched a bridesmaid faint in the middle of a ceremony on the beach just as the happy couple were about to say “I do”. I watched a groom faint in the middle of his own vows at a different wedding ceremony. It seems weddings are high-stress environments for some humans. I’ve never seen anyone playing dead at a wedding, but I’ve witnessed some marriages that were dead on arrival.
Fainting may make the problem go away, but usually not. When we are in extremely stressful situations we ought to stay conscious. We ought to keep our wits about us, as the saying goes. Slow, deep breaths help greatly to calm us down, but it’s a hard state to achieve when you’re being chased by a bear or are experiencing something equally catastrophic. Being more resilient through practiced breathing may help, and thinking through what we might do in the worst case scenarios is likely our best option. When it feels like it’s not our first rodeo, we’re less likely to be frozen immobile when things are turned upside down.
This morning I turned on the outdoor spotlights, looked around and then waited a beat before opening the door. If dogs could roll their eyes at their humans I’m sure that’s what the pup would have done to me in the moment. I smiled at her and let her out to chase her own dreams with a bit of assurance that the scene would be a little better than last night. One crime scene per week is my limit.
“Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.” ― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
We learn much from puppies and children. For all my self-absorbed analysis of the world and my place in it, there’s nothing like putting your ego on the shelf and playing a game of fetch with the pup, or laughing at the world like a toddler does, at the smallest of delights encountered. There are lessons on how to live in such moments of clarity.
Life is either an active pursuit of joy, or a series of distractions designed to make us believe that we’ve done enough with our days. Which we choose determines how we feel about the game in the end. So it is that I throw the frisbee in the morning fog while my coffee grows cold inside. What’s a cup of coffee but a joyful jolt of clarity anyway? The frisbee seems more sustained and meets canine approval.
On a solo walk yesterday through a high roller neighborhood yesterday I encountered a couple walking their own dog. Given the neighborhood, the chances are they were high rollers. Given the neighborhood, one could make the case that I was as well (not quite). The dog was a big black Labrador retriever eager to greet everything encountered, including me. The couple were less enthused, with doggie dad grimacing at the thought of saying a word at all. I know a no trespassing sign when I read it— this was an encounter best completed quickly. I said a quick hello to their dog and nodded and smiled at the grimace greeting me, and we walked in opposite directions. One never knows why someone is holding back their joy, for life is full of reasons for grimacing. That doesn’t mean we can allow them to steal our own joy.
We ought to live our lives focused on joyful interaction with the world, but we know the world is full of pain and misery and the occasional threat to our own well-being. To see the world through the eyes of a child seems naive and fraught with potential danger. Walking through life with our guard up surely seems more pragmatic, but we face other threats when we keep the world at arms-length. We rob ourselves of the possibility of delightful encounters along the way.
The more life I put behind me, the more I find myself in the business of joy production. We can’t get a smile out of everyone, but we can surely try to raise the collective spirit of a world increasingly in a sour mood. Perhaps this is too much to ask as a purpose of a single lifetime, but it can surely be a product of one.
