Trying to be more like my dog

Moose drives me crazy most days, especially this time of year (storm season) as she wreaks endless destruction on our house and creates neighborhood chaos in her attempts to escape thunder. She makes the house extra dirty, which is great because it complements the minis job of redecorating with yoghurt and vegemite. She's dug up expensive turf that was laid with much sweat and tears, and has also buried all sorts of things in my yard, some of which smell unsanitary to say the least. It's great, because that's my favorite....a stinky, dusty, backyard littered with poops the size of my children (and no matter how often I pick said poops up, its like they magically reappear). Livin' the dream.

My list of irritations with her aside, at night, once the choas is over, I often look at Moose happily sprawled on the floor and think - is there anyone kinder than the family dog? I once read a quote that was along the lines of, 'Everyday I try and be the person my dog thinks I am'.....Well, I'm not entirely sure what kind of person our Moose thinks I am - but I certainly could learn a lesson from her. Faithful, patient and more concerned with my well-being than her own. Always. She's a good sort, old Moose, not concerned with her ideas, just concerned with loving me. And making sure I know it. Always.

I know we all know it, but we could learn from our canine friends. A little while back I was sitting with my friend, listening to her tears, helpless as my heart hurt for hers. From what I understood, she had had some differences of opinion and ways of doing things with people in her world, and she felt they had dealt harshly with her and stomped all over her with their words, their deeds (sometimes lack of deeds) and general attitude towards her. What could I say? What could I do, other than love her in the only way I know how? So I hugged her, nodded, offered my thoughts of what I would do in her shoes, and just listened.

It was hard to see her so hurt and it made me think about how much pain we, as humans, sometimes inflict on each other. Sometimes on purpose but mostly I think it's unintentional. Sometimes, in the midst of our own struggle, other people just end up a casualty.

It can be the annoying person at the grocery store who gives you the stink eye for no reason, or steals your car park in the kids parking, and then gets out with no kids, not even an empty car seat! (I will let down your tyres, I will!) Or if you are like me, it's more often someone close to me who cops it when I am working something through.

I think it's easy to be kind to strangers. If a random stranger steps on your toe, literally or figuratively, it's easy to say 'Oh don't worry, it's all good' and throw them a happy smile. It's so much harder when you have a family member or friend who every single time you see them, steps on your literal or figurative toe. So much harder. Because it's annoying. And can't they see how they are wrong and clumsy, and I am right?

I realise that at times I am so concerned with my own plans, ideas, beliefs, anxieties that I forget there is a human being on the other end of my 'process'. A human being with feelings, thoughts, their own struggles, their own insecurities, their own 'process'. Sometimes I get so caught up in being 'right',  I forget to be kind. Lately, the more time I stare at my old Moose, the more life happens and people I love go through struggles, the more I struggle.....I think, for me, its sometimes better to be kind than right.

I'm not talking about being a dormat,  letting people be awful to you or others and using 'kindness' as a way to get out of dealing with it. That's a one way to ticket to passive aggression town. Trust me, I used to have a season ticket. I definitely am all for healthy boundaries with others and self-respect.

I just mean, in day to day dealings, rather than always defending my own position, jumping to the judgement of others (even if only in my mind), I am going to try and be kind. When I have the choice to 'rightly' punish someone for a wrong they committed against me,  I am going to try and instead choose to be kind.

Like if you chose to wear crocs around me, I will still be your friend. Magnanimous, I know. And I won't point out that I hate crocs and you have clearly made a grave judgement error. See, kindness people.

I will try to remember, that at the end of the day, no one will really say about me, 'Yeah, she was great, she was so RIGHT all the time, you know?'

Thinking on all of this, I happened upon this poem, by Naomi Shihab Nye,  on a blog much better than mine, and it stopped me in my tracks. I think if I could see inside the life and heart of most of the people I come into contact with,  I would certainly be a little kinder.......

Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.  You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you every where like a shadow or a friend.