I learn so much from my baby puppy every day. Like how to find joy in everything, no matter if it’s just a leaf or a stick, it is pure joy and nothing else. It’s about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced.
Human babies are pure joy too, but somehow it’s different. They still carry with them left-overs from whatever baggage they are bringing into this new life. Although under developed, it’s still there just under the surface as soon as they enter this world.
Puppies, on the other hand don’t seem to have any baggage. Sure, they may cry and whine when they want attention like human babies do, but they are somehow simpler and more joyous. Sometimes my puppy reminds me of myself, like when she obsessively goes after something in the grass and digs her nose in deeper and deeper, and no matter how much I pull and chide, she persists (ummm, like a dog with a bone) until I get my face down near hers and make her look at me. Then suddenly she forgets about that bone, or worm or piece of grass, and then leaps with pure joy at the next flying leaf.
I, on the other hand, am not so easily distracted. When I get obsessive about something it becomes my world, my own personal bubble, and I create all kinds of havoc and angry people, and people that like to complain, or people that are failures. All mirror images of what I perceive myself to be. Isn’t that what we all do? We create the very things we are afraid of. Fear of lack of money, fear of rejection, fear of not being as good as someone else, fear of not being liked. And then all those fears come out in our manifestation of what is in our bubbles, and we run around inside it like we can’t escape our own prisons. But we can. And I know this because I see my puppy doing it every day. She is not in her own ugly prison surrounded by fear and loathing. She is in her own beautiful simple world with flying leaves, and wonderful sticks of all shapes and sizes.
I always hate when I have to take one of those sticks from her mouth when she wants to bring it inside like it’s the best prize ever. But she gets over it as soon as it’s gone from her mouth. Unlike people who get attached to everything and hang tight to everything we own as if we are going to take those things with us when we die. We are not taking them, so we need to surrender and allow life to just happen. To love every stick for the simple beauty it contains, without attachment—like a dog.