Category Archives for "Life Skills"

0 What to do when your parent tells you your relationship won’t last

Awerpia asks:

I’m very disturbed and confused. I don’t know what my mother wants from me. Today she smiles and asks about my girlfriend and the next day she’s saying all sorts of things. Mother has only seen pictures of my girlfriend. And from her attitude she seems willing to accept her as my girlfriend but never as my wife. I love my girlfriend so much and I love my mum even more. The way I love both ladies is so deep that I don’t want to have to choose between them. I’m on my way to school. I’m finally moving to the next chapter of my life where I will now be at the clinical level in my studies. And just a day before I departed, after spending almost a year at home due to Covid, my mother just decided to tell me “you won’t marry that girl, I’m telling you” in a very authoritative manner in the middle of a conversation.  I really don’t know why my mother wants to put me in such a situation. One day she wakes up and says give this to your girlfriend, I can’t fit into it, and the next day she just tells me to find an excuse and break up with her. Shirelle I’m confused!!!  My girlfriend and I love each other so much. She is 3 years older and working. She keeps on turning men down because of what we share. Only for me to graduate from school and tell her I’m sorry my mother says go away.  My mother has really spoilt my mood and I don’t know how to even cope with studies. I wanted to say I’m so sad but that’s an understatement of how I actually feel.  dsafAnd what makes it worse are her reasons for disapproval—that girl is too short, you will give birth to dwarfs, she’s not from a rich family… her reasons just don’t make sense to me… maybe because I’m deep in love. What do I do Shirelle? I can’t think straight.  I can’t wake up and plan a wedding without my mother’s approval. Especially from my part of the world where we value the blessings of our parents and assume that without it our marriage will be doomed. I feel doomed already. I never knew I would face this. I feel like just getting lost from the surface of the earth.  And my mother is a type who is very good at stereotyping and playing blame games. If I continue against her weird wishes and I face any problems in future (like short kids), she will keep referencing me till she dies. I’m so frustrated. I don’t know what to tell my girlfriend and I’m not ready to let her go.  It’s like my mother just wants me to have sex with her and dump her in the end for someone she thinks is perfect for me. I’m sure her idea of perfect is a rich tall light skinned figure girl.  I’m confused. Can I even focus on my practice? I have always done what mummy says, right from what I eat to what I wear. But this is just too much for me to bear.

Hi Awerpia –

I’m going to give you two answers, based on different readings of what your mother said.

You see, I’m not totally sure you’re interpreting her correctly.

It sounds to me like she’s actually saying, as parents do so frequently, “You don’t know today what you’ll want later.  And while that girl is everything you love today, she’s not what you’ll want long-term.  She’s not the girl you’ll marry.” 

Now that might irritate you, and make you feel like she’s still treating you as a child who doesn’t know what he wants.  But it’s a far cry from ordering you what to do.

And what I find with parents who make predictions like that, with an “I know you better than you know yourself” attitude, that they’re right way more than one might guess – oh, let’s say 50% of the time!  Yes, they do know you well, and as people grow to be more like their parents over time, they know a lot about who you’ll become.  But that means they’re also wrong 50% of the time.  You’re your own person, and have your own opinions and values – based on the way they raised you of course, but still your own version based on your own experiences and personality.

So if I’m right, you have literally nothing to worry about.  Either she’s right or she’s wrong.  Go on with your life as if she’d never said anything and all will be fine.

But if I’m wrong… this does get tougher.  It sounds like you’re in an in-between culture, where you’re not looking at a fully arranged marriage, but you are depending on your parents’ blessings.  So I will need to ask you a question then: when would you marry this girl if your parents were okay with it?  Would you wait to finish your years of study, or would you want to join yourselves in the next year or so?

If you were planning on waiting, then I’ll go back to what I’ve said before, that with time I imagine your mother will move past her prejudices about your beloved’s height and other “faults,” and learn to like her and accept her.  She might always say “I was hoping you’d choose someone else,” but still be able to live with your choice.  I just think it will take more time, for her to realize all the qualities you love so about your girlfriend, and to see that you – her son, whom she probably cares more about than anyone else on the planet – really want this woman.  And between those two changes, she will almost certainly become more accepting.

But if your plan is to marry sooner, then I’m not sure what to suggest.  You’re going to be far too busy to spend a lot of time campaigning for this, and might even find it hard to give as much time to your family or relationship as you had before, much less more.  So perhaps that is one dream to put off a bit.

But otherwise, truly, I think you two can end up like Handsome and me.  So many people disliked me when I was a puppy – a very obnoxious, hyperactive, troublemaking puppy! – but learned to love me over time.  This can happen with her as well.  You see, people just began to see me through Handsome’s eyes.  His excitement about me, his love for me, his work to get me to behave better… all became part of their lives as well.

So my advice is to just buckle down and be a great student, and trust that the best will happen.  And by the way, I need to add… CONGRATULATIONS and THANK YOU for doing what you’re doing!  I’ll never like shots or having things sprayed up my nose, but this past year has made me SOOOOOOOO appreciate doctors of all sorts!  What a mind you must have!  I will be so excited to hear what wonderful miracles you achieve!!

And if I were your mother, I’d be so proud of you my chest would just burst open!!

All my very very best,

Shirelle

0 How to deal with parents not accepting your bisexuality

Vedanova asks: I’m bisexual. Yesterday I came out to father. I went to his office and I could feel my heart beating very fast. I was very nervous. He was watching a movie on TV so I waited some time and then we went to get some food. When we came back, I still wasn’t very confident, but I told him I had something that I had wanted to tell him for a long time. And then I told him I was attracted to boys. And the first words that came out of his mouth were, “We have to change that.” I didn’t speak the actual word bisexual because I didn’t want him to know that I know about sexuality. And then I started crying. He started explaining me that this is all because of hormones and that I must have excess of estrogen in my system. And as every homophobic parent ever told their child, “It’s just a phase” was told to me . He wanted to explain me that after a couple years there will be no estrogen left in my system, and I will be attracted to only girls. Now he’s the doctor and not me so I don’t know if that is true or not. And then he also wants me to be a real boy and do “masculine” things and stop doing “girly” things. Whenever I tell him I think some stereotype is wrong he always has the two same reasons – nature told humans to do this (I have never been able to understand this reason) and what people will say. Before coming out, I thought that I would be hugely relieved after coming out but now I instead wish I hadn’t come out. He also told me to never tell anybody but him that I am attracted to boys. He told me that gay boys don’t go through puberty like normal boys do. They don’t ever get facial hair and their voice never deepens which I know is not true. He also told me to not look up anything on the internet about this stuff. He said that he was also attracted to boys in middle school and high school and then wasn’t, which I think he said to make me believe that it’s just a phase thing. I don’t really think that he is homophobic because he did not say anything against gay people. And because I acted like I know nothing about sexuality he also tried to explain me what are the causes of same-sex attraction and he said that it can be CURED by giving anti-estrogen medicines to males and anti-testosterone medicines to females to a certain extent. How can someone be a doctor and say that?! There’s no way a pediatrician does not know about this stuff. One more thing I want to say to you is that I would love to have this letter published on the website if you can (I wouldn’t mind if you wouldn’t) because I feel like this is an issue that every LGBTQ+ person faces and I don’t care if my sister sees it because now I’m getting tired of hiding my true self from the world.

Hi Vedanova –

Every person is guaranteed a few things in life.   And one of them is to disappoint their parents or caregivers, maybe a little bit and maybe a lot.  

You are absolutely correct that your father knows that much of what he said to you isn’t true (I mean, we’ve all seen LOTS of gay men with beards!  Come ON!).  But it’s clear that he doesn’t want to believe you’re gay or bisexual, and that pain in him is real and shouldn’t be discounted by any of us.  Even if we strongly believe it’s misguided.

So I want to throw a crazy notion at you.  Maybe, on one count, he’s right.  Maybe your attraction to men will go away when you’re older.  I don’t know, and you don’t, and he doesn’t (and maybe he wasn’t lying completely about this “phase” of his life!).  Maybe you also won’t like your current favorite food, or your current favorite song.  I simply have no idea.

But here’s the deal about it – it doesn’t matter.

You like that food today, you like that song today, and you’re attracted to both men and women today.  What you’ll feel in ten years is pretty irrelevant.  For all we know, by that time you may have fallen madly in love and gotten married to someone you plan to be faithful to for the rest of your life.  Will it really matter whether you’re attracted to men or women or some body types or races or whatever then?  If you’re faithful, you’re faithful, and that’s all there will be to it.

I do have to say I’m a bit concerned about his idea of giving you medications to deal with this.  I don’t know enough to speak on the issue, but getting a drug to reduce any hormone in your system sounds questionable to me.  What side-effects would that have?  I don’t know.  But it sounds scary.  

As I so often say to teenagers about their sexuality, what matters to me is that you keep safe.  So if you’re finding yourself attracted to both men and women, but not getting sexually active with them, you’re of course totally fine.  Where I see a concern is if you start dating a boy and getting involved – then I imagine your father doing more than he is now.

Vedanova I don’t know your age, or how long you’re planning on staying at home.  If you’re nearing the time you’d move away, you might consider just holding off on pursuing any romantic relationships with boys till then.  And maybe, to avoid confusion and conflict, girls too.

But if we’re talking about years and years, that becomes a tougher issue.

But for now, again, I really want to emphasize that I’m impressed with you and proud of you for standing up for yourself.  While you’re not happy with the immediate results, I think you’ll be happy forever that you admitted who you are.

And that won’t be a phase!

Cheers,

Shirelle

0 He’s a Tramp! … the hardest quality to attain

Over all the years I’ve run this website, I’ve talked about lots of movies – some good, some great, some maybe not so great.  But I’ve always insisted on one being my favorite.  My favorite love story, my favorite musical, my favorite everything.  And with the sexiest, most charming leading male ever.  Of course I’m talking about Lady and the Tramp.

This glorious animated feature is often considered one of Walt Disney’s better films (though not as historically important as his masterpieces from a decade or so earlier), but what matters to me is that it’s still the best movie about dogs ever.

Now don’t get me wrong.  There are lots of excellent movies that have dogs in them.  And a number of terrific movies about “a” dog.  But most of those are movies about humans, who have dogs in their world. 

But Lady and the Tramp is really about us.  How we live, what we value, and what we like to do.  Is it maybe a bit anthropomorphic (a long word that means animals do things that in real life only people do)?  Sure.  Like when the dogs can read!  But overall, it gets more right than wrong.

And biggest of all, it gets our single most important quality right. 

(Now I’m going to admit, what I say after this kind of requires you to have seen it.  So if you never have, you might want to catch it before you read on.  And if you do, he bigger screen you can see it on, the better – as it was made for the wide screens of the 1950s.)

If it’s been a while since you’ve caught it, the story surrounds a cocker spaniel puppy that a couple adopts and raises in their very nice home in a very nice neighborhood.  They name her Lady, which she most certainly is.  Her best friends are her neighbors Jock, a Scottie, and Trusty, an aging bloodhound.  Her life is bland and simple until the day a stray mutt, Tramp, shows up in her yard.  They like each other at once, but he insults her domestic life, and his rudeness repels her.

Soon after that, her humans have a baby, and start ignoring Lady a bit.  But when they go on a vacation, they leave the home and baby in the care of their dog-phobic Aunt Sarah.  Her cats try to destroy the house, and Lady stops them, but gets blamed for it and taken to a pet store to get muzzled, and runs away. 

Chased by some mean dogs, she’s rescued by Tramp, who takes her to a zoo to get her muzzle chewed off, and then shows her his fun carefree lifestyle, famously including eating spaghetti at an Italian restaurant, till they’re chased by a dog catcher, who nabs Lady.  Terrified in the pound, she meets other dogs, all who know and tell her about Tramp, and in particular about how many girlfriends he’s had.

Aunt Sarah frees her, but chains her to the doghouse in her yard.  Tramp shows up and tries to explain that he hadn’t abandoned her, but she wants nothing to do with him, until they spy a large rat entering the baby’s room.  Tramp gets into the house and barely wins a fight-to-the-death with the horrific vermin.  But when Aunt Sarah finds him, thinking he had attacked the baby, she calls the dog catcher to take him to the pound and put him down!

Lady tells Jock and Trusty what’s happened, and they run to catch the pound’s truck, while Lady’s humans, returning from their trip, discover the rat and realize Tramp’s heroism.  Jock and Trusty stop the truck in time, but Trusty is run over, leaving Jock in tears.

Then that Christmas, Lady’s owners bestow the now fully domesticated Tramp with a license, while their puppies play with their favorite neighbors, Jock and Trusty, who turns out to only have suffered a broken leg.

It’s good, isn’t it!  And I didn’t even get to the songs!

Looking at this movie today, there’s a lot to talk about.  Yeah, Tramp’s still my ideal fellow, but I can get a bit annoyed at how Lady’s always needing to be rescued by some male or another.  And the movie could even be called – in its own weird way – a little racist, with its evil Siamese cats singing in Chinese accents, its buffoonishly emotional Italian chefs, and its cliché’d images in the pound of Germans (the dachshund), Mexicans (a chihuahua), and even a Russian Wolfhound who quotes the works of Gorky (okay, I have to admit, that’s just hilarious!). 

However, in the end, the movie actually speaks against prejudice, as Aunt Sarah’s pro-cat-anti-dog viewpoint is proven SO wrong!  (And she even sends the family a package of dog treats for Christmas, showing that she learned her lesson.  Yes, in modern terms, Aunt Sarah gets Woke!)

But the reason I chose to write about this lovely treat of a movie is something else – something that’s never talked about in the film but is, I think, something we need to talk about a lot more in our world.  Integrity.

I got Handsome to look up a dictionary definition of Integrity.  He found two main ones: “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness” – and “the state of being whole and undivided.”  My definition would be sort of a mix between the two, where one acts on their values and has a core sincerity.

Handsome told me about a TV show a couple of years ago, where a society believes in stealing.  Not that they were dishonest exactly; they just believe it’s weak to earn things or get them through trade, and that “real men” take what they want instead.  Now I would want nothing to do with these murderous thieves, but they actually have Integrity – they openly state who and what they are, and accept the consequences for it.  At the other end of a moral spectrum, people who are willing to die for their faith rather than defend themselves absolutely have Integrity too.

Now Integrity isn’t even an issue with minerals or plants, or animals of smaller brains.  Rocks have pure Integrity, as do ponds and celery stalks and giant oaks and polar bears and cockroaches.  They can’t be anything other than they are.

It gets a little tougher when you talk about animals like horses or cats or, yes, dogs.  We can’t lie the way humans can (though humans are always accusing us of it – “I fed you two hours ago!  Don’t tell me I didn’t!”).  But since we are taught rules, we can choose to follow or break them.  For example, if a dog is told to stay off a couch, and only gets onto the couch when the people aren’t home, does that dog have Integrity or not?  On one hand, the dog is following a deeper rule (Don’t get on the couch when the humans are there), but on the other it’s living a lie (Act completely subservient and let them think I’m perfectly good, though I know I’m actually sneaking around behind their backs and doing what they don’t want)!

            But this gets way bigger when it comes to you humans.  You guys are so good at lying, betraying, hypocrisy, all that – so Integrity takes a lot of work when someone has as big a brain as you! 

            Think of those two definitions – moral uprightness and being whole – and imagine a woman in a marriage that has no spark who’s fallen in love with her coworker.  If she sticks with her marriage, she’s obeying definition one, but wouldn’t divorcing or having an affair be more in keeping with definition two?  She’d be fully herself, while breaking the most serious vow she ever made.

            What about the honest police officer who needs money to pay for his son’s medical operation, and finds some easy-to-steal money?  Is it more moral to save his son or obey the law?

            And what about when you did something years ago that you now regard as immoral, but to admit it would make other people’s lives worse today?

            Is Integrity even possible for a human?

            I’ll argue that it is. But it requires the ability to change, and openly own that change. Maybe that woman makes the choice to leave her marriage, or to change workspaces to avoid that coworker. She’s insisting on her Integrity, one way or another. Or maybe that officer does take the money, but spends the rest of his life working to pay it back. Again, the person has to change in some way, to allow for what’s different in their lives.

            And then, let’s go back to the movie (admitting, again, that the characters are pretty anthropomorphic), and look at the characters there. Those cats have basically NO Integrity (yes, they share their evil secrets with each other, but they are so phony to Aunt Sarah!).  While Jock shows great integrity (if you accept his hiding his bones from Lady and pretending there’s nothing there!).  And Trusty seems to live in a state of delusion about his tracking abilities, but he’s still a good caring guy.  And of course both of them show enormous Integrity in risking their lives to save Tramp, whom they initially didn’t like.

            Does Lady have Integrity?  Sure.  She sticks by her values as best she can.  When she runs away, it’s out of terror at the muzzle, not her cheating on her responsibilities – and she does say she needs to go back home after she’s free of it, to protect the baby. 

            But then we come to Tramp.  Does he?  Well, when he’s living free and easy, you could argue that, sure, he’s got full wholeness-Integrity in his love of a trampy life.  But once he meets Lady, he changes.  Suddenly he wants her for his girlfriend, which means he needs to cover up his past from her; letting her know about the other girls would mean he’d lose her!  So he’s stuck – and not fully being himself.

            But then, two events enable him to regain his Integrity.  First, Lady’s experience in the pound teaches her everything she needs to know about him (particularly courtesy of that great Peggy Lee song, “He’s a Tramp, but they love him / Breaks a new heart every day / He’s a Tramp, they adore him – and I only hope he’ll stay that way!”).  And then, while she’s rebuffing him for his past, that rat shows up, and he proves his worth for eternity.

            And the end of the movie shows it.  Suddenly his past is irrelevant.  He’s a husband, a father, and a heroic licensed pet.  Yes he has a past, and he owns it, but he has changed, and he owns that change too.  And as such, while all the adoring dogs in the pound might be unhappy with those changes, he has regained his Integrity.

            If there’s one thing we dogs can teach you humans, it’s this: Integrity is the best quality anyone can have.  We might cheat about the couch, or sneak food off the kitchen counter, but at our core we are honest.  We might live in love the way I do, or in fear as my friend Aria often does, but we are who we are.  It’s easy for us. 

            While for you, it’s a lifetime of work.  Especially as you grow and learn and change, which is just what you ought to do. 

            Because it really matters in the long run.  Someone might be disappointed that you’re not the person they want you to be, but fundamentally they’ll respect you.  Whereas, if you lack Integrity, they never can.  No matter how much they enjoy what you do for them.

            And more than that, having Integrity is what allows you to be loved!  Think of how easy it is to fully adore a dog or a cat or a baby, because we have that full Integrity.  But it’s harder to love an adult person that way, because they’re so much more likely to disappoint you by their lack of it.  But remember: people want to love each other, so they’re going to give you a break as much as they can.  Think of when you were a child and first realized your parent had a real flaw – they cheated at something or lied or just failed.  That was tough for you, but you still managed to trust and love them enough, because you wanted to.  Or maybe you had a boyfriend or girlfriend who just kept blowing it – breaking promises, flaking out, or being cruel to you.  Remember how you tried and tried to keep believing in them, so that you could feel loving and loved?  And how it felt when you realized you couldn’t anymore?  That they had so little Integrity you couldn’t find what to love?

            So yes, you’re not as perfect as us (and even we might not be as perfect as the characters in a movie, who never shed in the house or pee on a carpet!).  But Integrity will get you closer and closer to it.  And with that, you can be trusted, and respected.  And loved.

            Be a lady or a tramp, but be yourself.  And then, at the very worst, they’ll sing of you just what I’d sing of that hero if he were real…

“You can never tell when he’ll show up.
He gives you plenty of trouble.

I guess he’s just a no-count pup
But I wish that he were double!

0 Is it possible to trust someone completely?

PERFECTION asks:

When you fully trust someone does that mean you don’t get jealous anymore? What does it mean to really fully trust someone?

Hi PERFECTION –

            That’s a really great question.  I think there are two answers – and both are… yes.

            Here’s what I’m thinking.  I trust Handsome with every molecule in me.  I know he can make mistakes (like accidentally stepping on my tail!), but I know he would never do anything to hurt me on purpose.  He always wants the best for me.  No question. 

            But because I value him so much, I can go a little crazy when he’s too friendly with another dog.  But I don’t get mad at him, I just get very rough with the pooch – making sure he or she knows “That Man Is Mine!”  I don’t want anyone trying to steal him away, or to get too much of his attention that I love so much.

            But that’s one kind of jealousy.  There’s the other kind that eats at one’s soul.  It has less to do with what anyone else is doing than about ourselves – when a person feels they’re not good enough, they’re terrified that their partner is going to see them that same way, and leave them for someone more attractive, richer, stronger, whatever. 

            So to get back to your question – if I trust someone fully, I might get jealous of someone else’s interest in them, but I also could have such a low opinion of myself that I get jealous out of the thought that they’ll start seeing me the same way I do.  It’s two different kinds of jealousy (and I can tell you, the first kind is a lot more pleasant to live with!).

            But when you ask what it means to fully trust someone, I’ll go back to what I said about Handsome and my tail.  Sure you might idealize someone and think they’re perfect and can never make mistakes – but you’ll be wrong.  But if you see them as they are, and know that they care fully about you, then yes that’s a legitimate way of fully trusting in them.  And it is a beautiful feeling indeed!

All my best,

Shirelle

0 The Aquarian Apocalypse …a fable for our times…

            Certain kinds of stories transcend place and time.  For example, did you know that almost every land on Earth has some version of Cinderella, long before they’d have heard them from each other? 

            One that seems to show up in every culture that existed around the ancient Mediterranean is of The Great Flood.  You know it – that humans were so awful that God (or the Gods) flooded the whole world out, but one man was so good that he was warned in advance from above, and built a great ship on which he saved one member of every species of animal, along with his family.

            Another sort of story we hear about is where God (or the Gods) test people, and punish or kill everyone who doesn’t give the right response.  The Jewish story of the Passover might be the best known of this (due to exciting movies of it like The Ten Commandments!).  In it, God sends a plague that kills the first-born of every family that doesn’t put a sign of devotion on their doors, but it ‘passes over’ the homes that do.  Pretty harsh, huh!

            Then there’s another sort of apocalyptic warning tale. It’s more modern, and showed up a lot in stories written after the invention of the atomic bomb.  In these, either mankind learns from disasters to master its newfound power and move forward, or it doesn’t and is ruined (by those disasters), or it’s warned in apocalyptic terms of just how dangerous this new power is.  In other words, the stories all have the same moral: “If we don’t learn how to stop fighting each other, we’re going the way of the dinosaurs!”

            I was thinking about these three kinds of stories recently, when it hit me that we may be living through a fourth one – one that isn’t being written or filmed; it’s literally happening to us. 

            You see, odd as it may seem, we’ve actually survived the other ones.  Whatever awfulness humans were doing before The Great Flood, it hasn’t been repeated, so you guys must have improved!  And while horrible acts have been perpetrated on people for their faith over the last 2500 years, the world seems to have survived the vengeance of their deities. 

            And maybe most amazing of all, the human race, for all its flaws, has gone 75 years without using atomic weapons on each other.  Pretty astounding when you think of it!

            So I guess the overall moral here is that, slowly but surely, humans do learn their lessons.  But there’s always room for growth, right?

            Well, what about our current coronavirus apocalypse?  Is there anything we can learn from it?  It hasn’t decimated the entire world, or picked favorites based on ethnicity or faith.  And it hasn’t created any devastating wars, yet.

            Is this something completely new?  Something promising to raise humanity to a higher level?

            Maybe.

            I argued in the last Pawprint about how sad and furious I was that people’s laziness and stupidity had allowed the virus to grow and spread for so long that it killed one of my favorite people.  And yes, I’m still very angry about that.

            But what if we look at it another way?  What if the whole human race is being taught a lesson, one you need more than ever?  What if it’s on purpose that this disease demands something all new from everyone?

            Not to care for yourselves, or your families, or even all of humanity.  But to care for “the other.”

            So here’s the story I’m suggesting.  A new fable:

            One morning, the Great Dog in the Sky looked down at the world She had created, and said, “Humans have evolved well.  They no longer do such unspeakable things that I need to eliminate them and start over, and they now treat other religions well enough that I don’t need to kill their children; and they’ve even shown some restraint in how they fight each other.  But while they’ve improved in some ways, they have gotten worse in one.  They are selfish than ever!”

            And of course, She was correct.  The growth in their intelligence and skills had made humans less dependent on their tribes, and more focused on themselves and those closest to them – to the degree of often not caring about anyone else.  They figured “somebody” would take care of anyone in pain, and smugly assumed that any poor or destitute person must deserve it.  They no longer were trying to eliminate everyone who was different from them, but they had not yet learned to truly love each other, in the way the world needed.

            So She sent down a new plague.  A plague unlike any before.  This plague hurt or killed some people, but infected far more, without showing any symptoms.  And once humans learned the basic facts about it, they realized something new – that the only way to beat the new plague would be to wear masks, keep distant, and keep clean.  Not to protect themselves, but to protect each other!

            At first, most humans didn’t grasp this concept.  “But if I’m feeling okay, then I can’t be sick, so there’s nothing wrong with my going about my life as usual,” they insisted.  But then bit by bit they learned.  They went to a fun party and came home, and unintentionally infected and killed their grandparents.  They took their daughter to a religious ceremony to teach them moral lessons, after which she gave her best friend lung damage for life.  They screamed for their favorite team at a sports event, resulting in local hospitals filling their beds with patients on breathing machines, while other people died waiting to get let in.

            And meanwhile, they also suffered the lack of everything they loved doing together.  Restaurants and concerts and plays and movies and sports events.  And even going to school.  All of these got stopped because of the danger caused by people who didn’t know they were contagious.

            And so, bit by bit, the people learned.  They started acting as if they were sick, even if they were almost certain they weren’t.  They politely gave room to those they were walking past.  They wore masks even though the nasty things were uncomfortable and made their faces break out.  They sanitized themselves before and after encountering everyone.

            And even those who got vaccinated, guaranteeing them that they’d not be hurt by the disease, kept masked and distant and clean, in case they might carry the disease and spread it to others.

            And as enough people learned to act in such an unselfish way, the Great Dog chose to reward them with a lovely treat: she started to take the virus away. 

And slowly, just as the flood and earlier plagues had receded, the world began to re-open.  Schools enabled youngsters to meet and play and grow together.  Theaters and restaurants took people in to give them joy and sustenance.  Gatherings increased, with embraces and jostling and mosh pits and fistfights – everything everyone had enjoyed before.

            But with a new understanding. 

            You see, humans had been telling each other that the key to happiness was to treat others the way you wanted to be treated, to love your neighbor as yourself, for millennia.  Now they learned the next level of that – that you have to actually take care of each other!  Just wishing the other well isn’t enough. 

            And the world was better forever after.

            Do you like this story?  I do!

See, If a dog howls in pain, other dogs will join in and howl along with them.  That’s our pack mindset.  If a dog smells fatal illness in another, they might try to kill them, instinctively acting on the harsher side of our pack rules.

            Where humans are heading is to another level.  To say “It doesn’t matter whether I sense it or not, I need to alter my behavior for my fellow human.  That’s the only way to have the world I want.”

            In other words, the key to each person’s selfish desires is to act unselfishly!  You want your job back?  You want movies and concerts back?  You want to start meeting cute attractive people in public again, so one of them might be all you desire?  Then take care of the person next to you!  Everyone needs to do just this!  That’s the only way it can happen!

            And that’s the lesson the whole world’s been getting taught for the past year.  The sooner more people learn it, the sooner everyone gets better off.  And the longer people insist on sticking to their old mindsets…  well, you know.

            Oh, but there are two aspects to my idea I’ve forgotten to include.  First, this has actually been predicted.  Not the stupid virus, but the place I like to think the world is moving.  Astrologers and some religions have spoken for years about the Aquarian Age – an era that will involve mutual understanding, after the past era, the Piscean Age, of conquest and domination.  Don’t look for one specific date; the idea is that we’re in a period of transition into it.  Depending on where you read, this transition might take decades or it might take centuries!  But every time people learn to think of others in their actions more, that’s a great step forward into it.

            And the second aspect?  Oh that’s the best part of the story.  When the Great Dog in the Sky saw that humanity had learned and grown, she threw a great party up there – a party for all who had perished in this recent plague.  And all of them felt pride about being part of this wonderful change, and sang and danced to all the songs they’d most loved in their times on Earth, and beamed down love on those still here below.  Which led to them deciding that the song they wanted to dance to the most, regardless of their musical tastes, was of course…

            So why not get up and dance with them!  I do!

Love,

Shirelle

0 Should one share a gift with others?

Maya asks:

Hey Shirelle 
Are relationship gifts meant to be shared? 
For instance say I am in a relationship.  My boyfriend buys me something for our Anniversary, then I permit my sister wear it, or maybe she takes it without asking me, and I am like, very okay with sharing it. Tell me Shirelle, what are your tips when it comes to buying and giving out gifts, like are they meant to be shared with others?  Because I believe the significant other won’t feel good about it.  What do you think?

Hi Maya –

I love sharing, and I love even more when things are shared with me, like whatever Handsome is eating!

But of course, people take gifts very seriously, especially when a lot of thought and emotion has gone into them.  And even thought the gift is arguably “given,” some gifts are actually requests.  The easiest example of this is a wedding ring – if I give you one, and you accept it, you’re giving me yourself in marriage.  And I’d sure be bothered to see you re-gifting it to someone else!!  (Don’t worry, I’m not actually proposing to you; I’m fully committed to Handsome.  But hey you could do worse – Handsome tells me I’m quite a catch!)

On the other hand, if I gave you, say, a book, and you let your sister borrow it, that probably wouldn’t bother me at all.  And even if I had given you a wedding ring, I’d probably be honored to see your friends try it on and see how beautiful it was, and tell you how lucky you were to have me, “Oh Maya, you got the best dog EVER as a spouse!”

Now with your question, this is a tough one.  I’m sure your boyfriend would be bothered if you actually gave his gift to your sister.  That would seem very insulting.  But to let her borrow it – maybe he’s fine with that, I don’t know. 

I think the best thing would be for you to ask him what he thinks is best.  But – and here’s my main advice here – ask it in a very specific way.  Tell him how beautiful it is, and how much it means to you.  And then say that it’s so beautiful that your sister really wants to borrow it and wear it to something special.  But, while you want to make your sister happy, it’s more important to you that he be okay with it. 

Do you see what I’m doing here?  Instead of letting her wear it and making him feel unimportant, you’d be telling him just how important it is to you, how special.  Because that’s what matters most.

I have a funny story that deals with this.  When Handsome was a teenager, he was dating a girl whose parents didn’t trust him with her, and especially her father didn’t like him much at all – just because Handsome was dating his daughter.  For her birthday, Handsome baked a cake for the first time, and it came out pretty awful – one side rose but the other didn’t, some was fluffy some was almost liquid.  He tried to fix it by adding extra icing on the one side, and it didn’t work.  But of course it still tasted okay – it just looked lousy.  He brought it to her, with many apologies, and took her out for the evening.  And when they got back to her house… they found that her parents had eaten half of it!  Was he upset that his gift had gone to someone other than his beloved?  No way – he was thrilled!  Their eating the cake made him feel more accepted by them than he ever had before! 

So there’s no single answer.  Try my words with your boyfriend, and I imagine all will become clearer.

And if you think of it, send me a photo of what he gave you!  I’d love to see it!

Thanks,

Shirelle

8 My Friend Mutt – the need to use your full mind

My dear friends, I usually write you from a place of tail-wagging joy.  Though sometimes I have written you from sadness, or from anger.  But today I’m maybe the saddest and angriest I’ve ever been.

One of my very best friends ever passed away a couple of weeks ago.  I hate loss, and, like all pups, get very attached to those I love, so a friend’s death is always going to hurt my heart.  But what makes me so angry is that this loss was completely unnecessary – my friend should have lived for many more years.  In fact, I’d argue my friend was murdered.  But not by one individual – he was murdered by an energy, a concept.  My friend was murdered by Stupid.

I’ll explain that in a moment, but first let me tell you about my friend.

Mutt was a friendly cheerful guy who always had a song in his head and an awful joke to tell.  His real name wasn’t Mutt, but that’s what his granddaughter called him when she was a baby, and of course I loved the name, since it made us sound related!  He was strong, energetic (played tennis three times a week), and a great friend to all who knew him, while a devoted caretaker to friends and family. 

A few years ago, he and his wife moved into an apartment which, for the past ten months, has done better than anywhere I know of at keeping their residents safe from the coronavirus.  The people who ran it enforced very strict rules, not letting any visitors in, testing the people who worked there, and quarantining anyone who went out for any reason.  With this, they managed to go nine months without any resident becoming infected with Covid-19.  But then one person, somehow, caught it.  And then, a week or so later, Mutt caught it too. 

When asked how, he said, in a cheerful tone, “Oh, probably just by walking down the hall.”  At first he just had a slight cough.  Then he had a couple of falls – strange because he normally wasn’t clumsy.  After a bad one, he was sent to be checked out at a hospital, in case he’d broken anything.  No, his bones were fine, but because they tested everyone who came in, they tested him and he found out he had it.  A week later, he was in a hospital room on oxygen.  Days later, he was in an Intensive Care Unit on lots more oxygen.  And a couple of weeks after that, his lungs gave out and he went to be welcomed above by his parents, his sister, other family and friends, and I can’t imagine how many dogs.

Don’t get me wrong – Mutt had a terrific life.  He enjoyed great health, was successful enough in his work to devote many years to volunteering for causes he cared about, and relished the love of many.  His lifelong passions for nature and music fed his soul every day, and he even left this world listening to a favorite opera.

So why am I so angry?

Because of Stupid.

If Mutt had developed a cancer, or suffered a heart attack, I’d just be writing about here about what he showed us about a beautiful meaningful existence.  And if he’d caught this awful virus when it first took over the planet, I’d have wailed about the tragedy of illness.

But something else happened.

By last May, scientists all around the world knew what we needed to slow this viral spread.  And told us so, in very clear terms.  They knew we would eventually develop vaccines to free humanity from its clutches.  But that, until then, all people everywhere needed to do just a few things to keep its spread down.  You’ve heard these rules all year:  to wash your hands frequently, to wear a mask and stay distanced from others when you’re out of your home, and to avoid crowds.  And especially to remember that this disease can be contagious even when one has no symptoms of it – that anyone, no matter how good you’re feeling at that moment – can be a carrier and transmitter of it… and thereby potentially a killer of someone else.

Of someone innocent.  Of someone maybe strong and healthy.  Of someone perhaps with no dangerous pre-existing condition.  But of someone you’ll have to live the rest of your days knowing you killed.

And far too many people chose to be Stupid.  To ignore those rules.  To take the chance.  And why?  Well, apparently, because they think wearing a mask is just too much work.

Now you know those cones that veterinarians put on us pups after we’ve gotten stitches?  They’re annoying.  Even more so for me because I have such a long nose so I have to wear a really big one.  I totally hate them.  But Handsome has always made sure I have one when I need it, no matter how much it annoys me.

So if I could put up with that, why is it such a big deal for a human to strap a small piece of fabric over their face, especially when they can choose to wear one that has a pretty or fun pattern on it (Handsome loves wearing ones with monsters on them, for example!)?  And if I can put up with staying on a leash when I’m outside our home, why is it so difficult for some humans to keep a safe distance from others?

The answer is it’s not.  Anyone can easily wear a mask and stay distanced (and those who say masks hinder their breathing just need to talk with anyone who saw Mutt in his last days about what real breathing trouble looks like.  Or, if you truly have a serious respiratory issue, then you should be even more cautious of this virus, and find ways to stay completely away from others all the time till it’s gone!). 

But that’s just about being lazy and selfish.  It doesn’t account for Stupid.

All year, all over the world, we’ve heard stories of people arguing that they knew better than the scientists.  Who say that masks impinge their right to personal freedom. Who even go around yelling at those who follow the rules, screaming that they’re wrong to wear masks and keep distanced.  Even some rotten politicians have scorned the safety measures, inspiring their peoples to Stupidity. 

Now I realize that some countries have enforced strict rules on safety, which have largely kept the virus out.  They have shown the truth – that when people obeyed the simple rules the scientists recommended, the virus reduced to a degree that all were safe.  Which is great, but my point is about people who’ve had the freedom to choose what to do – and have chosen Stupid.

You see, if people had chosen safety over Stupid even when their governments didn’t force them to, the same excellent results could have been true everywhere. 

But no.  These Stupid people have spread the virus all year.  These Stupid people have filled hospitals with struggling, gasping, and dying patients.  These Stupid people have kept schools from being able to take children back in, restaurants from being able to provide food and service, churches and mosques and synagogues from being able to give their parishioners the warmth and comfort of group worship, and entertainers the ability to stir audiences to joy.

And, by keeping the virus so prevalent, these Stupid people killed my friend Mutt.

But in the midst of my grief and anger about him, I then think of how far the power of Stupid stretches.

Look at our international squabbles.  How many are because of Stupid?  The Koran, Torah, Bhagavad-Gita, and Bible all tell us to love and take care of each other, but Stupid tells people that their loving God wants them to randomly kill and oppress those who worship differently. 

Humans have all the knowledge they need to slow down climate change, to keep our air and water clean, and to preserve what’s unruined of our planet, and even bring back some things we’ve lost.  But Stupid (led by Greed) keeps telling the world that the scientists are wrong about all this, and to keep the greatest mass suicide in history continuing.

I could go on and on.  And remember, I’m not the one with the great brain!  I can’t do math or write a song.  I’m just sitting around looking at you guys, wishing you’d USE those brains of yours in the best way you can. 

But I’m not getting what I wish for.  In fact, the day before Mutt passed away, I saw the most astonishing demonstration of Stupid I’ve ever seen.  Maybe that anyone’s ever seen.

A politician who’s known to lie a lot lied that he had won an election.  The votes were counted and recounted many times.  Courts had looked at all his arguments, and dismissed them.  Members of his own political party confirmed that, yes, there was no way around it; his opponent had won clearly.  But he kept insisting to his supporters that he’d been the victor, they’d been cheated, and they needed to fight to keep him in his job.

And on that fated day, a number of them did.  They violently broke in to the halls of their own government, threatening and attacking their representatives, resulting in five deaths.  And here’s where I’m really in awe – these people were so Stupid, they did this in front of television cameras, and even took photos of themselves and posted them online.  They broke the most fundamental laws of their country, and went to great efforts to make sure everyone knew about it.

In so doing, they destroyed their own lives.  They’re being arrested and jailed, and will suffer legal punishments.  And that man they did this for?  He’s of course denied that he had anything to do with them – liars lie after all – sacrificing them to save what he can of his own skin.

These Stupid people followed Stupid arguments to the point of doing Stupid things – and countless numbers, including themselves, will suffer because of it. 

I could run down a list of Stupid things I’d like you not to do, but I shouldn’t have to.  Because that’s the whole point: you’re smart and know better.

You see, that’s what I mean by Stupid.  I’m not asking you to suddenly create world peace, just to use your own knowledge to avoid doing Stupid things that inflame needless conflict.  I’m not asking you to invent the way to save the planet, just to do what you already know will help it.  And I’m not asking you to cure the next pandemic disease.  Just to follow what knowledgeable people have told you is the best way to handle this current one.

I’m just asking you to use the brains you have.

Because the world needs you to. 

In Handsome’s book about what I taught him, he lists one of my major lessons as “Ignorance Is Not A Virtue.”  But if you wish to sit at home and be ignorant and not do anything about it, I suppose that won’t hurt anyone.  The danger is when a person chooses ignorance, and then acts on it.

Someone somewhere chose to behave in a way that, directly or indirectly, gave Mutt the disease that killed him.  Did they do that by going maskless, not washing, partying in crowds?  I don’t know.  I just know they did it by being Stupid.  By honoring Stupid.  By choosing to let Stupid run their lives.

Don’t be that way.  Don’t be Stupid.  Use your full brain.  Be your full self.  And if you catch yourself being momentarily Stupid (hey everyone does at times) then just change to acting Smarter.

You just get this one life in this body, with this brain.  Not using it is worse than a mistake.  It’s really kind of a sin when you think of it.

And I’m tired of being sad and angry.  So even if it’s just for me – please – embrace your Smart, and tell Stupid to go straight to…  to where I know my dear Mutt will never be sent!

4 Do Dogs Celebrate Holidays? – the importance of happiness

Every year around this time, I get asked if I celebrate Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or Eid, or Diwali, or… and I always have the same answer:  I. Am. A. Dog.  I love watching you guys get excited about holidays, and I love any special food that celebrations might bring my way.  But I don’t have a religion, or a cultural heritage, that focuses me on any particular days.  That’s for you folks, and I support your choice to do or not do them fully.  Whatever makes you happy.

But this makes me think of something I heard someone say recently.  She was talking about how she tended to feel depressed a lot, and added, “I think I’m afraid to be happy.”  I thought that was a really profound and vulnerable thing to say, so I jumped up and licked her face till she turned red from giggling.  Which I guess made her at least a little happy, I hope.

But that line has stayed in my head ever since.  What a sad concept. And I wonder how common it is.

It’s totally normal for people to learn to protect themselves emotionally.  “Don’t get your hopes up” is a term I hear frequently.  And I can understand – if you let yourself get too optimistic about something that might not come true, the disappointment if it fails can hurt like blazes.

 But is that a reason to not let yourself get happy?

 Some people have a sort of supernatural belief, that says that if they’re too happy, some god or demon will get offended and make bad things happen to them.  I guess if you believe that, then, sure, happiness would be scary.

But do you?

And some people think it’s insulting to let yourself be happy when so many others in the world are suffering.

But do those suffering people really care about how you’re feeling right now?  Don’t they have other things to worry about?

Life isn’t perfect, and nobody’s happy all the time.  But when things are really good, I actually think it’s a sign of ingratitude, maybe even a sort of blasphemy, to not let yourself feel them all the way.  In fact, while I’m not in favor of repressing any emotion, wouldn’t it make more sense to hold yourself back from feeling sadness or anger or jealousy, instead of happiness, since those are a bit less convenient to the others around you?

But this leads to my real point:  Yes, I think you should let yourself be fully happy when things are great.  But why not also let yourself be mostly happy when things just aren’t bad?

 I was in the back seat of our car once, when Handsome stopped to talk with a parking lot attendant, who asked why he was so cheerful.  Handsome explained that that was because he was happy to see him.” 

“But you’re always so cheerful.  Every time I see you.”

“I am?”

“Yeah, you always seem happy.  How do you do that?  Life stinks!  It’s so stressful!”

And Handsome and I talked about that for the whole drive home.  That guy hit the nail on the head!  It’s not that life is always bad – it’s just always stressful.  And stress is just worrying about what might happen. 

So if you let yourself be happy when nothing bad is happening, then you’re likely to be happy about 99% of the time.  And yes, that 1% will still be bad.  Maybe horribly bad – wars and wildfires and floods and… yeah, pandemics! 

But the rest of the time, if nothing bad is happening, look out your window.  Birds are flying.  Trees are waving in the breeze.  Children are playing.  Dogs are joyously chasing animals with no hope of catching them.  A radio is playing fun music.  A couple is walking close together and one of them is nervously taking the other’s hand.  An airplane is flying passengers to somewhere they’ve never been, that they’ve wanted to see all their lives.  Worms are eating their way through the soil.  The sun is shining, even if you can’t see it.

And if you’re feeling low, so crummy that these lovely facts don’t help, then think about what’s funny out there.  A bird peed onto a lady’s hat.  A kid just told a joke that makes no sense to anyone.  A driver turned to look at someone sexy walking by and bumped into a tree.  And yes, a very serious gentleman is walking down a sidewalk, not seeing that a dog walked there before and took a stop to…

Or if even that doesn’t work, just think about someone you love.  Someone or something you’re just crazy about.  On my worst day, in all my misery, I can think about Handsome, and the fact that he exists, and I’m instantly a bit happier.  And I know that he does the same with me.  Lost his job?  Dumped by a girlfriend?  Stepped on a nail?  Yes, but Shirelle still exists, so there’s reason for joy!

But even that is more work than we dogs have to put in.  We don’t try at all.

And so you see, this is why dogs don’t have holidays.  Because we’re smarter than you in this one regard!  You need to have a day when you focus on family or gratitude or romance or remembrance.  But we celebrate every day.  Our smaller brains let us explode in awe at the sight of a sunrise, or the smell of morning dew, or the deep feel of the vibrations of the earth. 

And then we see you.  The people we love.  And we go even more crazed with joy.

So… scared to be happy?  I can’t even conceive of it – and that fact makes me even happier!

But for you guys, with your giant brains, I say: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, Beautiful Solstice, and all the others. 

And most especially, with great optimism for these exciting vaccines…  HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you!  Oh I can’t wait to see what comes next!

2 Speaking and Barking – the power of rhetoric

While I’m always happy to speak out against needless pollution and wars, I tend to avoid discussing politics.  It’s not that I think no one else should talk about them, it’s just that my small brain can’t quite get my head around most of the issues.  Is one tax rate better than another?  What are the appropriate consequences for certain crimes?  Who has the right to a piece of land, the people who’ve lived on it recently or the people whose ancestors were kicked off or tricked out of it in the past?  These questions are all WAY beyond my doggy brain.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not aware of what’s going on around me.  In my country, the United States, these last few months have been consumed by an election – in fact, if it weren’t for the global pandemic, I’m not sure anything other than the election would have even made the news!  But what was different about this election from others was that we didn’t hear all that much argument about policies or general stances.  This election was almost completely about one person – and whether a voter loved or hated him (not too many felt any lesser emotions!).  And often, about whether you loved or hated the things he said.

Now most of you Pack members don’t live in this country, and the election is over anyway, so I have no reason to bring up what’s good or bad about the candidates.  But it turned out that that one who was so central to everything lost – far more voters decided against him than for him – and so won’t be in charge anymore. 

And because of that, there will be all sorts of questioning about how he got power, what he did with it, and whether that was right or wrong, good or bad.

But I want to focus on one thing he has been downright brilliant at, and which enabled him to overturn centuries of tradition of this country.  His Rhetoric.

Rhetoric basically means the art of speaking and arguing.  Sure, we all know that it’s best to speak your words clearly enough to be understood, and to use logic in your arguments.  Even a dog understands that!  But Rhetoric moves beyond those, to questions of how one moves people, how one uses words to affect them emotionally – and very much in this case, how one can use Rhetoric to overpower logic and facts.  Think of it like this – there’s speaking and there’s barking.  Speaking exchanges information, while barking creates emotion.  Rhetoric is about the crossover between the two.

Maybe you’ve seen or read Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, where he dramatizes the two great speeches given after Caesar’s death.  Brutus speaks sensibly, explaining why he agreed to join the conspiracy against the late leader.  But he’s followed by Marc Antony, who uses brilliant Rhetoric to rile the crowd against the conspirators and start a civil war.

Now our finished leader hasn’t achieved that, or tried to exactly.  But he has been able to use words to accomplish lots, and in ways that other leaders could borrow.  And – and here’s my main point here – doing so will overpower facts and logic yet again. 

So I want to go through a bunch of what he did, so that you, my wonderful Pack members, can see these tricks when they’re used in your countries, and then see past them to decide what you really want in your leaders.

Almost all I’m saying here is derived from an amazing book, Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Logic of Donald Trump by Jennifer Mercieca.  She’s a professor of Linguistics and Rhetoric, and studied every word Mr. Trump put out – in speeches, debates, and social media – during his victorious 2016 election campaign.  And she found six major techniques he used.  Which I’ll go over here.

First, Argumentum ad Populum, or Appeal to the Crowd.  You see this one when a speaker compliments the group they’re speaking to “What a beautiful audience!” or argues that their crowd proves they’re right, “How can anyone argue with this?!”  Now there’s nothing wrong with this in, say, entertainment, when the argument gets made “How can 50 million Queen’s Gambit fans be wrong!”  But when someone argues, in your country, that a crowd of tens of thousands proves they’re the majority opinion… it’s just not true.  Maybe tens of millions are completely against them!

Second, Patriotism.  Hey I love my yard as much as anyone could, so I sure understand loving your hometown or country.  Cheer them on at the Olympics (when they return) and support your police and your soldiers who work to protect you, absolutely (especially your Canine Patrol if there is one!).  But when a speaker argues that your country or people are the best in the world… get suspicious.  And when they say that your country ought to be in charge of the world, and would be if you just put them in charge… get afraid.  Lots of leaders have tried this, and the last to really succeed was maybe Genghis Khan or the Roman Empire, depending on your views.  Napoleon failed, Hitler failed, and so will anyone else who tries.  Don’t give them the chance.

Third, Paralipsis, from the Greek for “To Leave to the Side.”  This one is my favorite, where one says, “I’m not saying _________, but I’m just saying _________.”  Like I might say “I’m not saying cats stink, but everyone knows cats smell really bad.”  Or maybe I say “Lots of experts say that cats stink – now I’m not saying it, I never would, but I just thought you should know that the experts say they just reek.”  It’s a cowardly way of saying something bad.  But it can be very powerful.  On one hand, it enables the speaker to say something mean or untrue without having to take responsibility for having said it.  But also it can make listeners feel like they’re part of an “in-crowd.”  Like the way any of you who don’t like cats might have snickered at my comments above.  But hey, that’s just you snickering.  I didn’t say anything bad about sweet little kitties!  I never would!  (heh heh)

Fourth, Argumentum ad Hominem, or Appeal to the Person…  but this kind of “appeal” isn’t a positive one.  This is where the speaker argues that what a person says doesn’t matter, because of some fault in them (real or imagined).  “Ahmed says I took five dollars from his wallet?  Well everyone knows Ahmed is a fool – remember how we all laughed when he got that a zero on the math test!”  Or “Indira says she saw me kick a dog?  Well she’s always been a liar.”  In both cases, the speaker didn’t even deny the accusation.  They just ignore it by insulting the other person.  In politics this can go even further, “My opponent says my tax plan will hurt our nation’s education.  Well you can’t trust her because her husband cheated on her!”  (As silly as this sounds, this worked in my country!)

Fifth, Argument ad Baculum, or, and I hate this term, Appeal to the Stick.  Threatening force or intimidation to overwhelm the speaker’s opposition.  “That newspaper said I stole money from my business partners.  Well clearly they’re just against me, so when I’m elected I’m going to put them out of business!”  Or just talking over your opponent all the time, or stalking them in a threatening manner (we’ve seen these happen here too!).  Or “Hey there’s a protester against me in the crowd, I hope someone punches him in the face!”  Again, it’s a cowardly act – if someone did punch that person in the face, the speaker would instantly deny all responsibility for it, saying “Oh I was just expressing my frustration; I didn’t tell them to do it.”

And Sixth, Reification, or turning people into things.  We see this most often in war.  It’s very hard for anyone to go off to overtake or kill someone when they see them as people, so leaders in war will work to dehumanize their opposition.  “They’re not people, they’re animals!”  Or “They’re godless, and our God orders us to kill or convert them.”  But you hear it in politics in subtler ways.  “The other party can’t think for themselves, they’re just a mob.”  And of course, “We’re the real (name your country here).  The ones who vote against me are against (your country).”

Now my friend Handsome added one more to Merceica’s list, from the world of Psychology, which is Projection. In the usual meaning, that’s when someone sees or is bothered by a quality of theirs in another person.  Let’s say you tend to be a flirt, but then you’re horribly bothered when you see someone else flirting.  Or else, you accuse someone else of flirting when they’re not even doing it at all!  But in this case, it’s the speaker accusing their opponent of exactly what the speaker does.  Maybe you’re a constant liar, and your opponent isn’t, but you keep saying they are enough to get your supporters to believe it.  Or you’re physically unfit, but you always accuse your opponent of being far weaker than you.  This both hurts your opponent and makes you look like you don’t have the fault, even if everyone can see that you do!

There are, of course, countless other Rhetorical tricks that one can use to achieve success in politics or other arenas.  But these are the ones that we’ve been watching, and in many ways suffering from, here for the last few years.  It would be a wonderful thing if all of you, wherever you live, could learn from our experience.  And, at the same time, if you can learn to use some of these tricks yourselves, but just use them for fun or even good positive reasons, then that’s all the better.

Meanwhile, I’m going to go back to the only way I know how to be – honest, troublemaking, loving, and optimistic that better days lie just ahead, for all of us.  And that’s not just an idle bark!

4 Sniffing for Enthusiasm – keys to re-finding motivation

            Handsome doesn’t talk with me about his work very often, but lately he sure has.  You see, he’s a therapist who works with lots of young people, and usually his job is full of variety – this 5-year-old is going through her parents’ divorce, this 9-year-old is getting bullied, this 12-year-old is acting depressed while no one knows why, and this 16-year-old has been sneaking out at night and smoking cigarettes with the wrong friends. 

            But not now.  Today nearly every youth Handsome sees has the same issue: Motivation.

            Now sure, that’s nothing new.  Kids get bored, and teens get boreder.  Always have.  But – and you know very well what I’m getting to here – this Coronavirus year isn’t like anything that’s happened before.  Children who have the same instincts as puppies – to get out and play and tumble and grab and hug and punch and kiss and pull hair – are stuck alone inside, with just some electronic screens to entertain them.  And teens who, just as instinctually, crave to be out laughing and flirting and showing off in the best ways, are trapped, being told to just do the rest of their overlong homework.

            And both, instead of spending their school hours trying and competing for grades, or passing notes to their classmates with silly drawings of the teacher, are (if they’re lucky enough to be able to afford it) sitting in front of a boring computer, where their teacher is trying as hard as they can to keep their students awake and focused on some subject that…  well… if they found it all that interesting, they’d have been learning about it on their own, right?!

            NO one is enjoying this, NO one wants it to continue, but NO one has a solution just yet.  So EVERYone is annoyed, frustrated, bored, and ANYthing but motivated!

            And how does that show up?  Kids sending in blank homework assignments, good students falling behind because they can’t focus, or top-level students just turning their screens off and saying “This is a waste of my time and theirs.  I’m learning nothing.  I quit.”

            What’s anyone to do?!  Is there a solution? 

            Well sure.  A cure, a vaccine, a treatment good enough for everyone to dare getting into groups again – that’ll fix this beautifully.  But for now, what can students do?  Or teachers?  Or parents?

            Now… you know what I’m going to say, don’t you.  There is an answer:  Stop asking machines or humans, and study us dogs instead!

            In most ways, our brains are just simpler versions of people’s.  Yeah, we have better smelling, and more squirrel-focus, but our relationship to motivation is just like yours.  So what do we do when we’re stuck inside an apartment or a yard all day, or even a cage?  Or when we’ve had our joy beaten out of us by abuse or neglect?  Or when we’re just plain old lonely?  How do we get motivated?  And how can that apply to you?

            Here are a few suggestions:

1. Bribery Works!  No pooch was ever born wanting to sit or stay or heel on command.  And trainers have found that punishment isn’t half as effective a teaching method as reward.  Fill your pockets with good-smelling treats, and your pup will be happy to train for as long as you wish, constantly doing their best to please you.  So why not do the same with students?  A full school day earns a chocolate cupcake.  A good grade on a test earns a trip to the ice cream shop, and a great report card brings in that video game they’ve wanted for months.  Yes, over time you want them to feel motivation in themselves, but THIS ISN’T THE TIME FOR THAT!  (And for those of you too old to be bribed – nothing wrong with bribing yourself.  “Finish this paper, and I get to watch the big game with a beer!”)
2. Get Outdoors!  There’s a reason we pups go crazy when we see you pull out a leash – our instincts are dying to get us out away from our homes, exploring, sniffing, experiencing, and especially MOVING.  Don’t forget – until very recently, humans spent most of their time outdoors too.  We species share a deep connection to nature that replenishes and invigorates us all.  So get out there – take a walk, work in your garden, or just roll around in a park.  And please don’t tell me “But I’ll get dirty!”  That’s not dirt – that’s nature, that’s God, that’s history and beauty and meaning out there.  What you’re wearing is chemicals and dyes and plastics and stuff. Roll in something way better!
3. Try to Get Curious.  Stick a dog in a yard for eight hours while our family is away, and what do we do?  Do we stare at the wall, complaining we’re bored?  Nope, we sniff.  There’s nothing interesting to us yet, but we look around for it.  Our ears twist around like sails, we check out every corner, we find what different places feel like to lie down.  And almost every time, we find something interesting.  A lizard ran by here.  A bird is singing in a tree over there.  Someone spilled something really delicious all over this place.  And how does that apply to school?  Well, let’s say you’re studying history, and that’s never been your thing.  A bunch of kings and national boundaries.  Borrrring.  But what if you think of it like a gang war, with every leader trying to hold on to their turf while someone else on their side plots to take their place.  Or an intergalactic battle for planets that will be won by the side with the greatest new weaponry.  Or a group of sly crafty mean girls each plotting how to become the alpha of the group.  Suddenly this is interesting to you?  Then you’ve already succeeded.
4. Socialize!  Yeah I know what we’re after here is motivation to study harder and do more work.  But wasn’t that easier when everyone hung out together, even in classes and in between them?  Now, everyone’s feeling this gigantic hunger for community and contact, so bad it hurts in the heart!  And of course that’s getting in the way of your motivation.  So reach out – call a friend you haven’t spoken to in months (or years), set up a way to meet either virtually or safely in person, and tell dumb jokes, reminisce about good times, talk about crushes, ANYTHING.  And you’ll find it helps the rest of your life too.
5. Look Forward!  We dogs don’t have nearly the sense of time you humans do.  We live in the moment mostly.  But your sense of motivation has a lot to do with what’s coming up.  “I gotta study my French tonight because there’s a test tomorrow.”  “I need to get better at kicking before the game next week.”  “I have to get this dress cleaned and pressed before the dance!”  But now, since no one seems to know what’s coming up anytime soon, that whole part of your brilliant brains is sitting unused.  But it doesn’t have to.  Just think further into the future:  SOMEday you’ll be able to go to regular schools again, and you’ll want to have moved forward with the rest of your class.  SOMEday you’ll want to go to college or university or get a job, and how you did today in school will matter.  And SOMEday you’ll be sitting around with your friends and family, and talking about how crazy a time 2020 was.  These WILL happen.  So focus on them, as much as you can.  Motivation will build there.

So that’s what I’ve got for now.  If you have any other suggestions, please let me know and I’ll put them into the next newsletter.

But for now, just know, I have only one motivation for writing here, and it’s YOU.  You’re what matters to me, you’re my whole reason for writing at all. 

So thank you.  Without you, I’d only be able to walk around my yard, sniffing at the fence, hoping to find a little scent, somewhere, of squirrel!