So, here’s the new plan. It’s been raining for a couple of days and it’s time to get the dogs into the house. They’ve been having a great time out in the backyard, barking at squirrels who dance
merrily above their heads, convulsed in squirrel laughter about the idiot dogs
below.
The dogs—beagle Jake, beagle-greyhound mix Zoe, and terrier mix Maisie—are covered in mud.
Under the Old Plan, I would fume about the dirt and aggravation. I would wonder
why Sharon and I are so crazy as to have dogs in the first place. I would
contemplate throwing rocks at the squirrels. I would say several choice
phrases, sometimes under my breath, sometimes more loudly.
New Plan: I think this: I am alive for only a short time on this earth, and this
is one of the moments of that life.
Isn’t that better? Isn’t that more affirming and positive?
Yes indeed, when I’m feeling negative thoughts, I will take a deep breath and appreciate that I am,
in this moment, alive enough, and, frankly, in-the-moment enough to want to
throttle the living daylights out of the STUPID dogs who somehow manage to get
completely COVERED in MUD in only about TWO MINUTES outside.
“How do they do it?” I won’t ask.
I also won’t wonder about how, in a yard that has far more grass than bare ground, they
somehow find the muddiest spots and get their paws totally encrusted.
It’s really important, for stress-relief reasons and also just as a simple exercise
in living a happier and more productive life, for me to focus on the wonder and
beauty of the world that surrounds us, and not on the fact that I’m wasting TONS of TIME dealing with MUDDY PAWS while these dogs put on big happy
grins as if to rub in the fact that they are so obliviously happy to be walking
mud baths.
And while the yard is on my mind, which it is a lot of the time because I’m CONSTANTLY having to deal with wiping dog paws, I also plan to notice the
beautiful green hues of a Tennessee spring, the flowers that bring bursts of
color to the yard, and the way the sunlight dances through the trees. I’m not going to dwell on the fact that the garden hose is all tangled up again.
“How can this possibly happen?” I won’t ask.
Under the New Plan, I realize it is pointless to waste valuable moments of my only life on earth fuming about the fact that I can carefully put the hose
away, and over the course of a few days while it is just LYING THERE with
NOBODY touching it, a curious kind of Hose Physics takes place in which it gets
all kinked up and TOTALLY TANGLED to the point that it takes, like, FIVE
MINUTES to get enough water flowing through it to water those beautiful flowers
that, in my new, positive state, I’m remaining focused upon.
“Doesn’t this violate some Newtonian, or possibly Einsteinian, law?” I won’t ask.
And speaking of the music of the spheres, under the New Plan, every clear
evening, I will spend at least a couple of minutes looking up at the night sky,
lost in the wonder that is the cosmos in which we all live. I pledge to
cultivate a sense of wonder that begins at the moment I see the first star of
the night and doesn’t end until, as I stroll across the backyard to get a better look at the
unworldly glimmer of the planet Venus against a violet-blue firmament, I fall in a HUGE FREAKING HOLE
that my STUPID DOGS have dug out here apparently for the express purpose of
making me break my leg in the dark.
“I feed them, I take them to get their shots so they will stay healthy, I worry
about them when we are away during a thunderstorm, and this is how they repay
me—by trying to snap my leg in two while I’m trying to enjoy a minute or two of peace here in the yard?” I won’t ask.
Yessir, under the New Plan, if I really work at it, someday I may be able to be
as successful at effortless happiness, at live-in-the-moment joy, as—well, as those stupid dogs whose paws I’ll be wiping again any moment now.
