Day: January 27, 2013

“The Sad Game”

“Blame

Keeps the sad game going.

It keeps stealing your wealth –

Giving it to an imbecile with

No financial skills.

Dear one,

Wise

Up.”

–  Poem by Hafiz, the Sufi Master

Kathleen Kimbell-Baker,  reader on Facebook asked me a fascinating question on my Sunday questions forum about the principle of showing fairness to dogs, especially when there are more than one. The question is important, I think. For me, fairness is a human, not a dog principle. Dogs, like donkeys, do not expect to be treated fairly. When I meet other people with my dogs, they invariably tell me that their dogs will be jealous once they smell the scent of my dogs. I believe that is complete projection of human attitudes. I don’t believe dogs experience jealousy, only curiosity, and sometimes when food is involved, competitiveness.

A dog’s behavioral mode is firmly established by 16 weeks, most behaviorists believe, and very difficult to change beyond that. Mostly, a dog’s attitude about other dogs and food and sociability are determined between 8 and 12 weeks. How their mother treated them or avoided them. How their litter mates reacted to food. How they found warm spots and enough to drink and eat. Out treatment of them is an important factor, but we rarely can do as much about their behaviors as we think, we rarely are as powerful as the training books suggest. This is why I am so careful about choosing my dogs and not assuming there is only one way to get them. Choosing a dog is not a moral exercise, it is a practical one and how one does it determines the dog’s behavior more than anything.

Still, I like Kathleen’s idea about fairness very much. It is a part of my approach to dogs. I believe dogs calm down and learn to live well with one another – breeding and temperament and behavioral issues aside – when they realize they will get what they need. Food every day, fresh water, shelter and attention. Each of my dogs has a role to play, work to do. Frieda keeps trucks away from our home and guards it. Red herds me and the sheep. Lenore interacts with people, she is a love dog. They are all fed at the same time and they all have to sit and wait a bit and be calm before the bowl goes down. Each gets a treat at the same time once or twice a day. Each has to be still and unobtrusive in the house. No dog of mine is ever fed near the table or given human food. No dog of mine every is permitted to play in the house. That is what yards and open spaces are for.

But fairness over time – this applies to donkeys and sheep too and I have seen it work time and again – is essential. It calms dogs, gives them patience, removes the need for them to compete or fight. Dogs are a reflection of us, always. If we want them to be needy and abused and dependent, that is what they will be. If we are disorganized or neurotic or confused, that is what they will be.  If we need them to be grounded, respectful of one another and our lives, that is what they can be, provided we choose them well. I am sorry to say I believe very few people choose their dogs well. We are selfish species, always thinking about what makes us feel good, not what is best for them.

But I like the idea of fairness. It has worked for me, and I do believe the dogs sense it and have their own instinctive appreciation for what they might call justice. We all wanted to be treated as equals and be treated fairly and respectfully. That is a projection I am at ease with.

Thomas Merton wrote that if you do not love yourself, you cannot truly love any other person, and you cannot love God or the idea of God. Since then, a number of spiritual counselors – and a shaman – have told me the same thing. I’ve never quite understood this idea, it always seemed narcissistic to me, the notion of spending a lot of time loving myself. Besides, as has been pointed out to me, I have not always loved myself very much. Mostly, not at all.

When I was told I was ashamed of my life, I denied it at first. But I think it is true in many ways. The idea of loving myself has been growing on me. Someone I trust said I need to love myself in the same way that I love Maria – I think for the first time in my life,  I understood what love was when we met. I imagine I was loved in my life before, but I did not know it or feel it.

I see that the love of self is important. And self-hatred is a poison. Fear erodes love, so does anger and judgement, resentment envy. Reflexively, I have denigrated myself as many fearful people do – fear is the anti-love, it corrodes love. The habits of my mind bring up regrets, resentments, mistakes, dangers and worries. To love oneself is not really narcissistic, I see, because it opens the door to loving others. To loving life. To seeing the light and liberating the spirit so often trapped inside of ourselves, but us and other things.

Our culture teaches us to be needy.  It teaches us to tell our struggle stories. The people we have lost. The dogs who died. The loss of loved ones. The cost of things. The burden of taxes. The price of gas. We seem not to know that this is the universal experience, as tied to life as breathing. We are not mean to live forever. We and our parents and our pets will all die. The question for me is not how I will die, but how I will live. Struggle stories do not teach love, they teach resentment and loss and fear. Self love requires different stories, new habits of mind.

Our media and many of our institutions tells us that to be secure and healthy, we must have money. My dental hygeniest says I am the only man in their practice over 45 who is not taking prescription medications. Does this make sense? Can all of these men be sick and unable to live without costly medicines?   We are told we need our medicines. IRA’s. Lots of savings. Jobs with health plans. I can look anyone in the eye who believes this and tell them that all of these things can be important and people have to make up their own minds. But speaking as someone with none of these things, I can also say there is another path. The idea that our happiness and security comes from things we have to buy, things that trap and imprison us, is, I am learning, one of the most powerful forms of self-loathing there is.

We are, in fact, connected. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot love anyone else, let alone all of us.

I am learning to love myself. So that I can continue to love my life. And the people who are in it.