The Free Radical

I spend a lot of my time just watching Sitka. Out in the woods, she’s a very happy clown! So far we’ve seen a few butterflies– like six or seven– and she loves to chase them. If this year is anything like the last in terms of butterflies everywhere, Sitka will be sure to drive herself crazy with pure joy!

When we encounter deer, which happens fairly regularly, she’s finally learning not to chase them… so much. Yesterday we encountered a small group of about five whitetail near the swamp. Their symbolism speaks to the gentle lure into New Adventure. As Sitka gave chase, amidst my sternest admonishment “Sitka, no!” I was surprised to find that she hardly chased them at all. Perhaps that’s because she quickly found this instead:

Yum! Nothing like a nice fresh deer leg covered in blood, bits of fur and strips of skin. Sitka was quite pleased indeed. She got to work on it immediately.

Scenes like this have recently become so commonplace that I was surprised to learn that Whitetail had a message to deliver.

“Observe the dog. She misses nothing. All of the available treasures she finds with ease. Why?

“She doesn’t dwell on the bones she just dropped on the other side of the swamp. She doesn’t daydream about what things she might find tomorrow. She stays put right in the moment, knowing that all of her opportunities for joy are to be found here.

“Opportunities and choices can only exist in the right here, right now. To think on missed opportunities is a misuse of imagination; it is like reverse worry. To think that more or better opportunities are coming in the future is likewise a delusion. All opportunities are here now. Your power to choose among them is similarly only here now.

“Your contract with the future is written in the language of intention. By all means, set beautiful intentions for yourselves. But your opportunity for realizing those intentions lies in the choices available to you right here, right now.

“Search each moment for every choice that it contains. Truly the choices are infinite, but a mind oscillating between the past and the future is effectively blind to all but the tiniest few. Everything that you might treasure is already here… sometimes in clever disguises, but if you consistently choose to be present with the boundless joy existing in every moment, you will miss nothing.

“Watch the dog; she is a true master of joy!”