Anyone who writes openly online deals with cruelty and judgment, it seems to have been built into the software that built the Internet. There are all kinds of Internet and social media police out there – political, animal, health – and they are always patrolling, ready to intrude on lives that were once considered private, and tell other people how to live. I am so grateful that Thoreau did not have to endure this in his time at Walden Pond, he would never have made it.
I have been writing online for years and learned to ignore the angry and self-righteous people who are so certain what other people should do. Sometimes I stumble and fall, it happened yesterday.
Friday and Saturday, I received some especially angry, especially cruel messages about me and Red from someone I vaguely knew and once respected. Someone who professes to love dogs, as the animal rights people in New York profess to love the horses. She suggested I was cruel to Red and betrayed his trust by sending him on an outrun in a big and beautiful corn field where there were no sheep. She was outraged about it, and claimed many others were as well, she demanded I stop doing it and that I stop writing about it. She said this was an enormous betrayal of trust and a cruel thing to do to a dog.
She also got confused and thought I was doing this on our cemetery walks, and was even more outraged about that (there are sheep next to the cemetery). The messages would normally have been mildly amusing to me, and I certainly would have ignored them, if I read them at all. I have a good instinct for messages like that, I just delete them or skim right past them. I get those kinds of messages almost every day of my life.
But I find since my open heart surgery that my newly-reconstituted heart is feeling things more intensely, I am more emotional than before, I feel things more acutely than before. My heart is different than before.
I was upset, I was angry at these messages, I was hurt at the idea that I had treated Red poorly, or betrayed his trust, or been cruel to him. (Red loves his outruns and once in awhile, when we are in a vast and open meadow, I will send him out on one, he runs joyously and eagerly and I have to say I do not see evidence that he cares if there are sheep or not.) Although it is practically a sacred rule for me to never respond to angry or disturbed people, I did respond to this person, I know better than to do that, people who send messages like that are never actually looking for conversation or dialogue. It was a mistake. Why did I make it?
I got more upset when this person said that Karen Thompson, the friend, minister and border collie breeder who sent me Red, was also upset by what I had done.
I forwarded the message to Karen – I do care what she thinks about me and Red – and she said she knew nothing about it and had said nothing about it. The writer was clever enough to know the use of Karen’s name would upset me further. Karen and I talked about it and laughed about it and wasted little time on it – Karen knows how much I love Red and how wonderful a life he has, we talk about it often – and then we caught up on our lives, and Red’s life.
She was certain, she said, that Red trusted me no matter what. He is smarter than that, she said.
I am making plans to go see Karen with Red in the fall, I think it would be a wonderful thing for all of us. I told Karen I didn’t care what this person said and the strange things is that I really don’t, but I did want to assure her that I was taking good care of Red. I take my responsibility for Red seriously, it is rare in a lifetime that someone will give another human being a dog like Red because they care about the dog more than themselves.
Karen has perhaps the best perspective on life of anyone I know, she has had a tougher year than I have – she nearly died of a lung infection and then wrecked her shoulder while trying to save one of her dogs from drowning. Neither lungs nor shoulder will ever be quite back to normal.
Karen is a person of true faith, she does not dwell in the world of negativity, as she puts it. She is the real deal, she moves forward with her life, still dances, lives on her farm, marries people, loves her friends, walks miles a way, runs her farm and breeds her border collies.
Karen said she knew that Red was in good hands, she follows the blog fairly closely and we talk regularly, she is grateful that Red is having the kind of life she most wanted for him – we talked about his therapy work – and was not in a position to give him. “I feel I am part of his life, I am grateful to you.” And me to her.
Karen sensed that I was upset by these messages – the doctors have cautioned me that some people can feel things much more acutely after open heart surgery. It makes sense, really, my heart is getting a lot more blood. I suppose it is easier to get to me by suggesting I am mistreating Red than by most things, and only a callous and thoughtless person would do that, somebody you know not to pay attention to. I do know better, but still, I was feeling it. The heart sometimes goes its own way.
I think I expected Karen to be angry, as I was, that she had been falsely drawn into conversation about things that were no one’s business but mine, things she would never say, intrusions she would never make, righteous judgments she would never offer. She was not upset. I said I was not calling because I thought she would be angry, I was calling because I thought she should know someone was using her name in this way.
Karen turned me around in 30 seconds and helped show me how to deal with my new and intensely feeling heart. “I’m not going to respond to this, I’m going to pray for her,” Karen said, “and try to understand what it is that makes people do things like that.” In a flash, my heart changed, my anger and hurt lifted, I was reminded of the spiritual way, the other way, the human way to deal with cruelty and anger. I was brought back to myself, to the person I have worked hard to be, want to be, but am not always.
So this was embarrassing for me and disturbing. I should never have responded to those messages or read them and I was surprised by how emotional I felt at first. Was it the medicine? The healing? The heart? I don’t know. I figure these things out by writing about them, that is my true healing, my true path. I am getting a better sense of this already just by putting it down and sharing it with you. That has guided me time after time, year after year.
It never makes sense to respond to anger in kind really, it never works. It is never healthy to respond in kind. I see that I might have some work to do to understand the new and perhaps more emotional nature of my refurbished heart. And to be a better man. I have often said the only men I like were either humiliated as children or tortured as adults. Perhaps I am becoming one of them – again. I thought I was already there, but then, we are never really there, are we? We are just on the road.
I think I was closed up emotionally in so many ways, and then I met Maria, and then my heart was reborn, and then my heart began to fail, and it called out for help, and I was opened up in the most literally and painful and enthralling of ways. Rebirth again.
I am not hurting this morning and as I write this, I cannot imagine responding to messages like that today, or communicating with the kind of person who sent them. Am I back to normal, or have I really changed? I think I have really changed, I think the change is permanent, I will have to learn to live with it and understand it. It is a gift to be opened up, I have the chance to really feel life and experience it. But I have to be self-aware, I have to understand the gift of my new heart, my feelings are new and different.
I love the way Karen Thompson handled this, she inspired me. She told me she was going to pray for this person. I am not quite there yet, I don’t feel moved to pray for her, but I am reminded that there are all kinds of people in the world, and my life is out there for any of them to reach out and touch in their own ways. I accept and understand that all of the messages I receive will not be kind and loving. Real compassion comes when we can empathize with the needy and the troubled, not just the people who are easy to love and like. When we put ourselves in their shoes, and wonder, as Karen instantly did, what makes them do what they do?
I was very much struck by the fact that Karen was so compassionate about this person, sending out her hurtful messages in rage and fury. She was not worried about me or Red, she knew that neither of us needed compassion or soothing or concern. Her own great big heart – I can always feel the pain and sacrifice of her letting Red go to come to me – went right to the person who did, and that was the real lesson for me, a reminder of the work I have to do to become a fully-realized human being.
The measure of a spiritual life is not one that is trouble free, but one that responds to trouble with grace. I am grateful to Karen for reminding me of that very important lesson.