A Few Things to Read

Never Let Your History Define You (Part 2)

This piece is an experiment, because I’m going to begin by reprinting an article I wrote on May 15, 2019 after my dog died… and then I’m going to share some recent thoughts that have nothing to do with dogs.

Part One

When I first met Dex, we were alone together in a vet's examination room; he had been wandering the streets of Brooklyn, starving almost to death. I was thinking about adopting him, but he was considering a quick escape.

He jumped up against the closed door, so that his head and front paws were just above the door handle. He looked at me. He looked at the handle. He looked at me. He looked at the handle.

That did it. Any dog that calculates whether to open the door or stay with a new human was smart enough for me.

By the way, once home, Dex quickly started opening the door to let himself out into the yard. I wasn't imagining it.

For a few years afterwards, I would find food under my pillow: a loaf of bread, dog biscuits and the like. Dex was hiding food, to be prepared in case he ever ran out again.

And so it went.

This forsaken, emaciated dog never stopped using his head instead of his brawn. He wasn't bitter at being abandoned. He didn't dwell on his unfortunate past. (Many rescue dogs do.)

Dex looked so much like a wolf that my neighbor once threw her body over her toddler to protect the child. I was there, and Dex and I both smiled as she lay on the ground and slowly realized she might have overreacted a bit.

Dex looked dangerous to some, but the only danger was that if your head got low enough, he would lick your face.

There were so many reasons that this creature could have allowed his past to define his future, but that never happened.

I can hear some of you grumbling right now: why do I care... he was a dog... this belongs on FB.

If you pay attention, you can learn a great deal by observing what happens around you. You can learn from dogs, the flow of water, the way ice melts. If you remain curious and open, you can learn; today, I'm sharing what I learned from Dex.

So many humans—and dogs—have a rough start and never escape it. Almost every week, I hear someone talk, more or less, about how their parents' lack of ______ explains why they can't be confident, get promoted, handle intimacy or exhibit compassion.

In fact, I had another dog who lived to be 15 and never escaped the after-effects of abuse that haunted her first two years.

But I'd like to believe that we can choose to leave behind the portions of our history that no longer serve us, if we are willing to work hard enough to accomplish that.

"Hard enough" can be very hard indeed. I'm not downplaying that. It might be brutally difficult.

But it's possible.

Dex Kasanoff passed away this morning at age 16, well-fed and well-loved.

Part Two

So what does a person have to do to leave behind the portions of our past that no longer serve us? I’m getting closer to a good answer.

Step one is to realize that portions of your past are holding you back. The personal example I often use to illustrate this is that when I was 10 and 11 and 12, a few especially pitiful souls used to bully me. So be it. But even now, many decades later, I hate it when people tell me what to do. Even though I recognize the scientific evidence that bullied kids grow up into adults who dislike taking commands, I find it ridiculous that these crazy kids had any lasting effect on me.

So, I’ve resolved to leave that behind.

Step two is to look into the mirror. No kidding. Spend a few minutes each day just hanging out with yourself. Maybe share a cup of coffee together. Don’t fix your hair or shave; these are unconscious actions during which most of us space out. Just take a few minutes and be fully present with your own reflection.

(Now get ready for some very curious things to start happening.)

Step three is to start trying to see the world as it is, as opposed to what you longer ago decided it was. For example, imagine that you run into your friend Julie, the one “who loves to gossip”. On this occasion, abandon your preconceived notions about Julie. Don’t label her. If/when she engages in gossip, refrain from telling your self, “See? I knew it.”

Instead, see her in objective detail. See her as a complete human being, and watch for details you have missed in the past.

Do this over and over again: see the world free of your own preconceptions. At first, it will be difficult, but with practice, it will get easier.

Are You Ready?

When you are ready, the world will help you rise to the next level. (So will I.)

Until you are ready, all talk of self-improvement is barely better than saying “blah blah blah blah blah blah.”

I hope this doesn’t sound too harsh. My intention is simply to share what increasingly appears to me as a universal truth:

To grow, you must be ready to grow

By “ready”, I mean ready on the inside.

All meaningful growth happens on the inside. Just because someone doubles your salary doesn’t mean you’ve grown.

I know plenty of people who got promoted and became less effective.

It is tempting to want the privileges of growth without investing the time and effort necessary to grow. “Just give me a better car,” many of us secretly wish.

We expect more and more of our significant other, while giving less and less. That’s not growth; it’s theft.

To grow, you must be willing to look inside with enough focus and intention to cause a shift towards… generosity… compassion… curiosity… grit… or another constructive quality.

I notice that the wisest people around me tend to watch me with a detached, yet polite demeanor. Over time, I have come to realize they are waiting for a sign that my internal state is ready to support the goals my mouth is forming. When I come to them with genuine focus and clarity, they are quick to help. But until then, their polite smiles say, “I’ll be here when you are ready.”

lessons from “Midnight in Paris””

In Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film, The Exterminating Angel, a group of guests cannot bring themselves to leave an elegant dinner party. Film critic Roger Ebert summarized the movie this way: take a group of prosperous dinner guests and pen them up long enough and they'll turn on one another like rats in an overpopulation study.

Okay, that’s a bit flippant. Ebert offers more detail here:

Obviously, the dinner guests represent the ruling class in Franco's Spain. Having set a banquet table for themselves by defeating the workers in the Spanish Civil War, they sit down for a feast, only to find it never ends. They're trapped in their own bourgeois cul-de-sac. Increasingly resentful at being shut off from the world outside, they grow mean and restless; their worst tendencies are revealed.

Now, let’s switch to Woody Allen’s movie, Midnight in Paris. Gil (Owen Wilson) is a successful but distracted Hollywood screenwriter in Paris with his fiancée, Inez, and her conservative parents. Gil takes to wandering the city at night, and each night somehow slips through time into the Paris of the 1920’s, where he parties with one writer and artist after another. After hanging with Hemingway, Picasso and Gertrude Stein, he bumps into—you guessed it—a young Luis Buñuel. They have this exchange:

I love this exchange because it reveals a fundamental truth about many of our lives. Again and again, we come face-to-face with the direction we should go in, or with an idea that has the potential to transform our lives in a magical and truly wonderful manner. And we ignore it. Or trivialize it.

Or don’t even notice it.

To cite a personal example, I spent a full year resisting the idea of becoming a social media ghostwriter, a career transition that eventually enriched my life tremendously.

We don’t get to look ahead and see for certain which job we should accept or which book we should write. All we can do is to be a little less resistant to new ideas and a little more enthusiastic about the possibility of approaching life differently.