More than meets the eye.
We, like many other, joined the pandemic puppy frenzy. Our furry baby has kept us busy; it has given us some trouble and a lot of love and joy. I must confess that I’ve never been a dog person; I had no idea how to train or care for a puppy, it had never been my responsibility. We all had a lot to learn!
Mr. P (for short) was born in the fall, so potty training took place over the cold mornings of the beginning of winter. We spent a considerable amount of time outside waiting for his bowel movements, and to kill time, he loved going around some bushes, trees, and specific places around the yard. It puzzled me. There was nothing there to see, but Mr. P, unequivocally, will follow the same patterns every time.
With the cold mornings also came some snow. It was a delight to see Mr. P and my human cub enjoying the gifts of a careless life, both tossing around, jumping, and eating snow to their heart’s content. And like every time, after a while, Mr. P will go dancing around the same bushes as he always did. To my surprise, snow revealed something that was clear for Mr. P: footprints. All around those bushes and his favorite places, there were rabbit or bird footprints going in circles and then fading into the yard, following those patterns I have followed as well, not knowing why.
Although I didn’t eat it, snow allowed me to have a deeper understanding of what Mr. P and I had been doing all this time. Mr. P’s acute sense of smell opens a level of perception for him that I lack. It took another element for me to understand him better and finally “see” what he always did. For the first time, I got to experience a little of what he experienced every morning.
Empathy does the same for us humans when we are willing to open a deeper level of perception for the experiences of others. My experience walking in “crazy patterns” around the yard was very different from his, and I could have argued he was just silly or crazy based on what I could perceive.
With all the reckoning and suffering we all have experienced over the last year, with all the injustice many communities have been suffering for ages, it will serve us well to realize that just because we haven’t experienced something going down the same path, the pain and struggles other might feel must not be real. We might share similar paths and yet have completely different life experiences.
Empathy is an acquired sense, it must be taught, and like a muscle, the more we use it, the stronger it gets. Just as I could have pulled the leash in the opposite direction and forced Mr. P to follow a path that made more sense to me, antagonizing and denying the realities of others only creates more pain and struggles for all, and eventually, it leads us nowhere.
What snow and M. P taught me allows me to enjoy my puppy and the yard differently: this mutual understanding made our walks more fun since we both knew what we are after. If only it could be that simple for us to recognize that above all, we are all just following our own paths in the pursuit of happiness.