You’re right to follow your heart, as long as you make sure you’re not following it off a cliff
By Strider the Dog
Dear Strider,
This is a weird problem to bring to a dog. But maybe you can give me some of your perspective. I’m heading toward retirement, and I’ve made a lot of decisions in my life to go the more creative, less well-paying route. There were times I quit really well-paying jobs in corporate America, where if I’d stuck with them and invested the money I saved, I’d be really rich now. Instead I followed my heart, as they say, and took on jobs that were satisfying creatively and, really, to my mind, better morally, but that didn’t leave me with a huge nest egg.
I’m not saying I’m looking at poverty. I always lived close enough to the bone so I could save enough to be comfortable when I got old. I do have enough. True, I don’t have more than enough, but that’s OK.
So what I don’t understand is why I’m looking back at those other turns in the road where I chose the life I have now, and feel sad. It’s not like regret, exactly. It’s just — sad.
I’m wondering what it means. Does it mean I was fooling myself about the choices I made? Should I have gone down another path? Will I feel regrets later?
Do you have any insights as a fellow creature to give me?
Thanks.
— Wondering About the Road Not Taken
Dear Wondering,
First let me say I love you for living close to the bone. We dogs think that’s the only way to live, and I don’t just mean a dog bone. Dogs don’t like waste. We like to be comfortable, but we don’t like to take more than we need. It’s a dog thing.
As a matter of fact, I do have some perspective on your question from my days as a stray and a runaway from three different homes. Those three homes weren’t awful. Well, one of them was, but I don’t like to think about that one. But even in the homes where I had a warm place to sleep, and was pretty well fed, it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted my One Person. No one in any of those homes played with me, or kept me company even. I was pretty well cared for, at least in two of the homes. But that wasn’t all I wanted.
So I kept running away. Sometimes, when it was very cold on the desert where I was a stray until they caught me and took me back to the shelter, I wondered if I’d done the right thing. Wouldn’t I have been better off staying put? At least it would have been warm and I would have been well fed. Food in the shelters is not first class, let me say. They do the best they can, but there are limits.
Then I would remember the girlfriend of the last guy at the bad home. He got me to guard his meth lab, and I’m sure you can imagine how a businessman like himself didn’t have time to be his dog’s One Person. His girlfriend, though, she really liked me and would bring me treats. Would she have taken me away when they broke up, which it was obvious they were soon to do, and given me a good home if only I hadn’t jumped the fence and run away before? Would she have been my One Person?
I wondered about that.
I felt sad even when Carrie Wright of Fedwell Farms rescued me from the shelter and took me to her dog orphanage. Even when she let me sleep in her house with her actual pet dogs, and didn’t make me sleep outside with the other orphans. It was a nice time. I loved Carrie, and it was fun hanging out with all those dogs. I still wondered, though. I had to share Carrie with 50 others. Had I done the right thing? If I had stayed put at one of those other homes, would I maybe have found my One Person?
Sorry for how long this is taking. But I wonder if you get my point? My own road was long and winding, with a lot of turns, and a lot of possibilities for regret. Sometimes I would be sad about the lives I’d missed by not trying other things.
But my One Person did find me. This is the life I was meant for. I do think back and feel sad for the dog I was, all worried he wasn’t going to end up here. I wonder if that’s why you’re feeling sad too — if you’re just in a holding pattern, like I was at Carrie’s farm, before your life takes off again. I don’t think you’re having regrets. I just think you’re sad wondering if you will have regrets later.
If you look at me, though, you’ll see that if you just keep on going, there’s hope that your life will be just what you wanted. That following your heart headed you in the right direction. That you never should have worried about it at all. It’s always right to follow your heart, as long as you make sure you’re not following it off a cliff.
I’m hoping your retirement is happy. I know mine is.
Good luck.
Got something you want to get off your chest? A pet like or dislike? Why not share it with the world and Ask Strider. Just email the Dog About Town at askstrider@ashland.news.
