I’m finding this topic that I dig into here to be real meaty. This is Part 1. I’m not sure how many parts there will be of this particular topic. Enjoy digging in!
If you’ve known me over the past three years, you know Ernest or at least know about Ernest.
I have been in the process of researching what it would mean for him and me to train to become a therapy dog team to support my soon-to-be launched Adventure Together program. As I was exploring around in the rabbit hole of online research (or dog hole? They can get real deep, real fast), I came across a highly recommend book entitled Bones Would Rain From The Sky by Suzanne Clothier.
I picked it up from the library soon after I requested it. Another hold was also ready: How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell.
A day before I picked these books up I decided I was done with watching streaming shows (Netflix and the like) beyond watching one episode about every other evening with my partner. I was finding myself bingeing on shows that would immediately seep into my dreams as well as take over the empty spaces in my mind where my creativity flourishes.
So I found myself on a recent Saturday night, sitting, wondering what I’d like to do. I picked up these two books. I read about 40 pages straight through of How To Do Nothing. I had already stuck about 50 bright pink sticky notes to various pages. I hit a good point to pause my reading of the attention economy and then found myself starting Bones Would Rain From the Sky. I was teary eyed just about 12 pages in.
The similarities of the books astounded me. The ways they both immediately hit me right in the heart with the weaving of of attention, connection, and relationship.
That evening was a meeting at the crossroads for me. Choosing to let go of giving over my attention to streaming tv services. Choosing to learn about my relationship with my own attention. Choosing to learn about Ernest’s and my relationship.
Ernest’s “gotcha date” (the day we adopted him) is coming up soon. It’ll be three years since he arrived with his big 3 month old puppy self, post throw-up in the back of the kind adoption woman’s CRV.
Suzanne Clothier writes about specific dog and human pairs as a way of telling her teaching stories. She writes in reference to one dog and human pair’s struggles, “There was no instant cure for this dog. Teaching him trust and learning to read his subtle warning signals would take time, I told his owner. ‘This is not an easy dog,’ I reminded her, ‘but he will teach you a great deal.’ In her eyes, I saw a quickening of hope and a fierce determination, and I knew that she would find a way to this dog’s heart and mind” (41).
Ernest has hardly ever been an easy dog. He is the first dog I have ever lived with and the second my partner has lived with. He is stubborn. He is smart. He is big. He is mysterious. He is adventurous. He is moody. He is an all-weather, all-terrain creature. In reading Clothier’s words I am realizing how much Ernest has taught me as well as how much I have learned about myself.
I’m going to end this post with a lengthy and really juicy quote from Clothier. This is where the weave of attention, connection and relationship really was humming right along with How To Do Nothing. In reading this I understand why - when wearing my early childhood education professional hat - I can observe parents and children passing by me on the beach and instantly gauge their quality of connection.
Connection is not created through proximity (otherwise everyone on a crowded elevator would become fast friends), though we do use proximity as a substitute for connection, just as we substitute holding a child’s hand or holding a dog’s leash for actually paying attention to them. Truth be told, we often substitute a leash for attentiveness to our canine companions. Consequently, dogs also substitute a leash for attentiveness to us. In essence, we eliminate the need for any deep attentiveness on our part while also inadvertently teaching the dog that he need not really pay much attention to us—we’re right there at the end of that lead.
This does not seem to be a terribly bad situation. The dog is safely restrained, and both we and our dogs may move along in some semblance of togetherness. But in the seemingly harmless act of tethering a dog to us and setting off for a walk ‘together’ in this strained fashion, we have already begun to undermine the relationship itself. We have already chosen less quality for the connection between ourselves and our dogs.
Ultimately, this choice may come to haunt us at a later time, in moments of far greater intensity and importance than simply walking together. Think of it like this: In allowing our dogs to pull us along, we are practicing, over and over and over, the quality of disconnection. We really have no right to be surprised when in other situations, when we really want or desperately need the dog to be fully connected and attentive to us, he’s a bit out of practice (64). (paragraph breaks mine)
This has me thinking of the many moments of “far greater intensity and importance” that we have individually and collectively lived through over just this past year. I seek for the relationships I nurture - with humans and Ernest - to be able to weather the times of intensity and importance.
Thus, I choose to aim for attentiveness in the every day moments.
Care to share how this is hitting you? I’d love to hear.
Til tomorrow and Part 2,
Cassandra