On Being and a Dog

9:47pm. Saturday, February 16,2013. Jazzman’s Café. Poughkeepsie, NY.

This is a picture of a good friend of mine. He wasn’t a part of my life for a long time, but he was quite a special being and this particular blog post is going to be about the philosophy he taught me during our short time together.

My grandmother helps to run a dog rescue operation called R.S.V.P (Responsible Solutions for Valued Pets) near her home in Hampton Bays, NY. She often takes in animals that are too old, too sick or too behaviorally challenged to fit into normal living situations. At any given time she usually has between 14 and 18 dogs living with her, all with their own specific issues that deem them “unadoptable.” For about 20 years now, my grandmother has taken in a significant portion of Long Island’s problem dogs. Her story is incredible and she is a dear, dear person… but that’s for another post.

My grandmother acquired my friend, Cuddles because his previous owner became too old to care for him. Cuddles had one paw that was atrophied and people who might have adopted him worried that a dog who could only walk using three legs might fall down stairs or become injured when playing with children. I’m sure they worried that other animals might hurt him or that he wouldn’t play fetch like other, “normal” dogs. They were right about one thing – he was far from ordinary.

After a visit to Hampton Bays last Easter, my little brother, Mickey fell in love with Cuddles. With a significant amount of begging, my mother agreed to take Cuddles home to our house in Connecticut. After all, Cuddles was too young-spirited and healthy to fit into my grandmother’s hospice-like environment. Mickey (my brother) is also somewhat of a distinctive individual like Cuddles, and I think the two of them might have been drawn together across a universe of possibilities to find exactly what they each needed in the time and space in which they converged. Mickey – a friend, some responsibility, a purpose and unconditional love. Cuddles – someone to accept him, someone young to play with, and a family all his own. After a few weeks, Mickey nicknamed Cuddles “High Five” because of the way he looked running towards you on three legs, with a smile on his face, with his gimpy paw raised up as if to say “hey man, high five!” Given a chance, anyone who knew High Five grew to love him.

His very being was unlike any other I’ve ever met. His story is complex; we don’t know exactly how he got his trademark paw, his particular age, or what would prevent a dog with his kind of joyful spirit from joining a family before ours came along. I’m sure he faced a lot of hardship in his lifetime, but he never let it faze him. He played a mean game of fetch even on three legs, he never fell down the stairs, and he could jump about twice his body height. He never refrained from being so blissfully at peace with exactly who he was and he never let it limit him. He taught me that at the end of the day, being is about giving your best self to the world despite what the world assumes your best self can be.
While we often assume limits are imposed on us by the world, Cuddles taught me that so many of our limits are those that we allow the world to impose on us. He was a furry, little wordless reminder to be strong when others assume you are weak, to be happy when you have reasons to be unhappy. This was the ontology (the philosophical theory of being and/or existence) he imparted to me, and given an entire existence full of abilities and opportunities for empowerment, I’ll count myself lucky if I’m half the being he was.

Cuddles died this past Thursday – Valentine’s Day. He became suddenly ill with pancreatitis and unfortunately his body did not recover. However, he left me with one last lesson concerning being, that is: right now he exists as so much more than a crippled, dead dog. He continues to be in my mind and he has left a tiny gimpy paw print in the fabric of my experience. And that’s just me. High Five communicated in silence what I am begging the blog gods to give me words for right now. I know I haven’t done this little dog justice but I hope that what I’ve been able to capture about him here helps to preserve his theory. I hope his story permeates your experience and in effecting you and me both, he will never cease to be but rather live on in a smile, a high five, a choice to believe you are good enough in the face of someone who tells you that you are not. His last lesson to me was that being is more than just you alone in a body- it is your essence that extends into the world and, depending on the attitude you bring, it lives on, regardless of whether or not you exist, you continue to be.

Thanks High Five.

To You, On Love

3:35 pm. Tuesday, February 4, 2013. My Local Coffee Hangout in Poughkeepsie.

First off I'd like to thank those of you who continue to read my blog posts. I know it has been a while since my last post and while I'd like to make excuses for myself i.e. I was busy, overwhelmed, tired etc. the truth is we all make time for the things in our lives that we feel are of utmost importance. I will simply aim to be better and I hope that anyone who reads my posts knows how grateful I am for the consistency of your reading when as a writer I become inconsistent.

Now that, that's dealt with, I recently watched "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and one of the lines in the movie has stuck with me for a few weeks. This line has to do with a topic I'm pretty sure I've been avoiding as long as I've been writing blogs. Love.

When I think about writing about love I'm reminded of some advice I received from my poetry professor when I tried to write a poem about the moon. She said to me, "Chelsea, don't ever write about the moon, too many people have tried too many times and it always turns into a sappy cliché that falls flat with your readers." Love is a lot like the moon.

Who can do love justice? As for this wayfaring philosopher I'm sure I can't.

The line from the movie that's been haunting me is "we accept the love we think we deserve." It seems cliché enough; I swear I've heard it before. The whole statement reminds me of that new-agey philosophy book that came out a while ago, "The Secret." Remember "The Secret"? It had the old-timey looking cover with the fake wax seal pictured on the front, and it claimed that everything we have or do not have is a result of our own thinking and energy bringing about the world we make for ourselves. I used to think it was complete garbage, I still do in many respects, but there’s something to that line "we accept the love we think we deserve." I can't quite say that we bring onto ourselves the love we have, as there are many out there without love that want it, and many with love that wish it would leave them.

All of this aside, love is tough. It’s tough to define, to explain, and really tough to communicate without seeming fake and cliché. Yet, I’m going to try:

Recently a friend of mine asked me, how do you know when you’re in love. Frankly, how should I know? What on earth, other than my tiny experience of being human, could qualify any definition of love I could give? And, that’s when it hit me… I think (but of course, take it with a grain of salt). Is it really about what we deserve at all? I proceeded to give my friend an explanation of this deeply self-sacrificing and rare entity I called love, I believe my words were “the willingness to give up everything you have, could have, are or could be, for another person.” I went on explaining how this type of thing is far from common. I said most don’t love. I said that if one were to actually love they could never give it up or fall out of it because it would be the most valuable and precious thing they’d ever known and at the same time will ever know, it is beyond money, and happiness and success.

Since I gave this wildly unattainable (and maybe pompous) definition of love to my friend though – which she wholeheartedly disagreed with by the way – I’ve given more thought to it. Perhaps love isn’t my crazy definition, perhaps it is something different, possibly there is no one true explanation but rather the desire to know another human being’s conception of love and manifest it in their life.

This reminded me of something else that another good friend once said to me (aren’t I lucky to have so many good friends). She said, “I think the Golden Rule is bullshit. Why should I do onto others as I would have them do onto me? Why wouldn’t I try and get to know how others would like me to treat them and do that instead? Sometimes people don’t think the same way you do and they don’t want to be treated the way you want to be treated.” To this day that’s one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever heard. I think it might apply here.

What is love? I could give you my definition but I think that what we are all more interested in is what is “I love you”? Just as one body alone in the universe cannot be in love, love cannot be defined by one body alone. Take it for what it’s worth to you, but maybe when we talk about what is “I love you” we are really wanting to know from another person, what is love to you and how can I be a part of making whatever definition you give a reality in your life. Maybe that’s the unselfishness I was hoping to convey in my original definition, but it was misplaced. The unselfishness in love, perhaps, is where I give up my own precious conception of love and what it means to me so that I can adopt yours and give it back to you by living it out.

Like I said, I’m just one tiny human experience. I get it wrong all the time and I long for love and cherish the love in my life just like the rest of you. That’s why I’m wondering this week, and probably for many weeks to come: what is love to you?