Day: July 26, 2015

“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”  – Lao Tzu
Acceptance has been in my mind all week.I believe acceptance is the key for me of love, of spirituality, of peace of mind, of connection. Last week, I went to New York City to spend a day and night with my daughter, newly married and busy building her new and full life. Is there still room for me, in it, I wondered, on the train to New York?

Can she accept me for the father I am, for the life I life, for the broken parts of me that she will always see?Every parent makes this journey, from the center of a child’s life to the edge, at least, that ought to be the journey in my mind.

Don’t we all wonder if we still matter? Emma was a metaphor of acceptance for me, we were always so close, yet had drifted apart, our lives took us in different directions, I got sick, caught a fever that lasted some years.Anger and confusion had come between us, I am the father, it was my job to sort it out, repair the damage.

To take the blame, to accept the responsibility – all of it. I imagine I wanted my child to grow up in my own image, I never thought of it that way, but what other way did I know? I wanted her to take the path I took, to love the things I loved, to cast aside the secure and orderly life for a life of change and meaning, as I came to understand it.

This is the arrogance of men, I think, perhaps of fathers, perhaps of parenting. Failure to accept others is a disease,  you can see it spreading all over the Internet, on cable news every night, in every press conference held in Washington. In millions of posts on Facebook.

I am to blame, too.  Acceptance has always plagued and evaded me, I was broken as a child, and if you are broken as a child, you will stay broken your whole life, it is very hard to accept yourself, the challenge is to pick up as many pieces as you can and make yourself as whole as possible.What did I need to do, I asked myself on the train, to get my child back, to nourish her and help her to feel strong, to give her every gentle and feathery push I could on her own train ride into life, not to block the tracks with my own ego and clouded spirit?

I knew acceptance was the key, I always knew it, even when I could not practice it. Could she accept me also, believe in me, not try and convince me to change my life, convince me of ideas I did not share? To stop resenting me for the things that make me me?  I knew Lao Tzu was correct. Acceptance is personal, individual. I seek to accept myself, finally and for good.If I could not accept  yourself, no one can accept me.

If I do not accept myself, I will always seek and need the approval of others. If I cannot accept myself, there will be a hole in my heart, it will fill with fear and resentment and regret. I do not tell my daughter what to do, how to live, what to worry about. I do not warn her about the dangers of life. I do not mind her business, or judge her decisions, invade her privacy. I speak as little of my own life as is possible. I accept being slighted, forgotten, or even disliked.

I strive to be gentle, even under provocation, to never hide behind my own dignity.We accepted one another in New York, I could feel it. I realized we both had the same thoughts, resolved to do the same thing. I entered her life, I did not come to alter it or worry about it or judge it. She accepted me (mostly) and did not wish I was someone else, living somewhere else, being someone else.  It was a very good trip.

I only ticked her off once, a record perhaps. She returned to her life, I returned to mine, yet we crossed paths in an important way.Love has it’s own magic and chemistry. I learned this year that a broken heart can heal, can mend. Acceptance is the doorway to love. If I can love another for who they are, that is pure. If I can be loved for who I am, that is magic.

 

If you are thoughtful,

and compassionate,

and can stand in the shoes of others,

and feel the pain of those who are not yourself,

and understand that no suffering or loss in the world is new,

or yours alone,

or not a part of life,

then think about this for a moment:

There seems to be a great reward for clear and compassionate thinking,

You will hear music every morning,

wings with which to fly at dawn,

each thought will turn into a blazing comet,

a burst of extraordinary light and color,

You will make a thousand suns light up the dark corners of the world,

and make a thousand moons go mad with desire,

and blush and moan all night.

I came out onto the porch yesterday and saw a peaceful tableau, a timeless one, somehow. Maria was sitting on the wicker sofa reading, a barn cat was sleeping under her raised knees, a border collie puppy was chewing a bone on the floor. Animals complete us sometimes, I believe the world works best where people and animals live in the everyday worlds of the other. They belong together, there is nothing more natural in the world than for people and animals to be together.

Fate is spending longer periods out in the pasture with the sheep. She is still not strong enough to move them or intimidate them, but she is very good at sitting with them, circling them to keep them together, watching them. Soon, she will be bigger and more assertive, with a stronger herding eye. Then we will take things up a notch.

I am surprised to learn that I have never had a dog quite like Fate before, and that is a good thing, as she challenges me to be patient, loving, and to learn still more about dogs in general, and this very fascinating breed of dog in particular.

Fate is as close to being a wild animal as she is to being a dog. She has explosive and inexhaustible energy, her senses and instincts are so finely tuned that she can barely focus on what is in front of her for more than a second or two. She is very affectionate, but not in the way of most dogs, she rarely is  still long enough to focus on any one thing or person.

She is bursting with instinct, she is so finely tuned to the world that she will spot a hawk miles away, a dog barking miles down the road, a rabbit moving nearly invisibly through the meadow grass, a mouse running in a corn field. She is obsessively curious, exploring every inch of the house – every wastebasket, package, towel, laundry basket, and for awhile (no longer) counters where food is stored. She knows no boundaries, really, and learns quickly, but only through patient, continuous, clear and relentless repetition.

When they say border collies are not for everyone, they mean it, and it is good to listen. People meet Red and say they’d love to get a border collie, I think they need to see Fate. Yesterday when I pulled into the driveway and opened the door, Maria and Fate were coming out of the house. Fate charged across the yard, leaped through the open door, landed on my chest, setting off the horn, spilling a cup of coffee, careening across the dashboard and nearly coming out through the window on the other side.

Last week, she came dashing into the living room and threw herself up and towards my lap as I mumbled “no jump, no jump!” and she went sailing over me and my chair, bounced off the wall, came around and did it again. I was still yelling “no jump” when she showered my face with licks. Every day she finds a way to empty the contents of the wastebaskets onto the floor in a neat pile. She takes socks and underwear and hides them in different parts of the house. She battles with her squeaky toys for hours. And then, of course she chases sheep, digs holes in the yard, tortures Red, barks at leaves that rustle in trees.

This has all thrown many of my cherished training notions into a heap, that is good for me, that is how one learns. I try not to be shouting at her all the day, to be flexible. I am giving in on the wastebaskets, she does no harm and it is easy to put the tissues back in. I want to focus her energy and spirit, not quash it. It is so easy to screw up a border collie, I can testify to that, I will not ever do it again.

The crate is an invaluable training tool, as always. It gives her time to be calm and center, to be with herself, to rest and absorb the many sights and sounds of of the day. When she gets too excited, too aroused, too crazy we just say “crate, Fate” and she rushes in and lies down. She needs that time in there. So do we. So does almost any dog in need of boundaries and calming and training.

Fate loves every single thing in the world. On her walks, she jumps and hops joyously through the meadow. She loves every person she meets, nearly melting into the ground at the sight of the carpenter working on a barn down the road, or our UPS man Bernie.

Day by say, she changes. She gets calmer, She stays down longer, she is more affectionate and focused. But she remains explosive and intense. She will probably stay that way. Our herding is going very sell, she is coming into herself. Her amazing spirit and curiosity and love of the world is intact and preserved, I never want to train her by breaking her or intimidating her, not that this seems possible. I am learning to love a dog in a new way, my other border collies have been different. Rose was a calm professional, focused and business like. Izzy was like a lab. Orson was damaged.

I appreciate the opportunity she is giving me to learn and grow, to make mistakes and fix them, to try new things that work, to find yet new ways to communicate with this extraordinary creature. I am speaking to her more and more in images and visualizations, her mind is so fast-moving this is hard, but it is happening. She shows love indirectly, not like a Lab, she shows it by her presence and attention, her occasional and brief outbursts of joy and love. She checks on me continuously, she waits for me on our walks, she watches to see if I put my pasture boots on. This is how border collies love.

I love to watch the bonding going on between Maria and Fate, Fate eagerly trots off to Maria’s studio all day to have some calm hours, to soak up a different vibration, a different set of emotions. Fate is one of the great dogs, it will be such a joy watching her spirit evolve. I am planning a therapy dog visit with Red this week, and this much is clear: Fate will not ever be a therapy dog. She lives in a different realm.

Border collies are  definitely not for everyone, they are very definitely for me and for Maria. How grateful I am to the loving and empathetic spirit of Karen Thompson, I am not sure I can ever get a dog from any other place.