Choices, Stick-Chasing, And Finding Joy
One late afternoon, some summers ago, I was at the beach.
I was with our dog, a Labrador retriever. He was playing fetch with a stick I was throwing into the ocean. Every time I threw it, he darted into the ocean to find it. Swimming through the waves, he would get the stick and carry it
back proudly to shore. He would drop it in front of me, shake off some of the water soaking his coat, and stare at me, heaving, begging me to throw it in again.
We did this for a while, and it was always the same. He was joyous. Eventually I had to stop, even though I loved
seeing him that way. He would have kept doing it until he drowned.
I realized something else as I was watching him.
He was so happy because jumping into the North Atlantic to retrieve things is what he was born to do.
Now, people are much more complicated than dogs. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
