Lessons from My Dog and Bill Murray

He's flopped out in the middle of the floor, sporting bald patches and a handful of big, ugly stitches. There's a plastic cone around his neck that smacks of a bad episode of The Jetsons. In the past week and a half, he's been stoned from anesthetic, had his teeth cleened, had three lumps removed, and hasn't been able to do anything more than lift his leg without one of us checking on him. None of this has stopped him from wagging at the sound of his name, or draping his sixty-pound frame over my legs while I'm trying to sleep. A few years ago, when he cut his foot on some zebra mussels, he spent three weeks flying around the house in a permanent pirhouette, as if his fourth leg was, and had always been, completely superfluous. This is a creature who has taught himself to undo zippers so he may get to the granola bars at the bottom of our school bags, the same one who is happy to drink from a mud puddle or a toilet bowl when there's nothing else that's cool enough. When it comes to rolling with the ups and downs life sends, there is no one nearly as adept as my dog.

Recently, a very wise person pointed out that life goes in waves, like the rise and fall of the tides. Being happy when the tide comes in is easy. Knowing what to do with oneself when it recedes is the tricky part. For a control freak like myself, it's a bit like torture to be stuck on the proverbial sand, surrounded by nothing but flotsam and jetsam. But I'm learning a great deal from Zen masters such as the furry one sleeping on the floor, snoring with all four legs stuck in the air. I'm learning that there's peace to be found when life, the universe and everything tells me "Sit. Stay."

When I need an extra nudge to knock my out of my Sisyphusian rut, there's always Bill Murray's speech from the movie "Meatballs". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3S_k1dRbXY