I had some interesting thoughts this morning as Lucas, my spouse and I went for a pokey walk in the rain! We were all rather soggy and slowly making our way back to the house…the first revelation my husband shared was that we had some how forgotten about day light savings time…I had been fussing that we were behind schedule, turns out that my timetable was perfectly intact and in fact we could meander. We were in the home stretch and our lovely old pooch was moving so slowly, his need for a leash was rather futile, we decided we might as well allow him a little freedom. He had just finished a light jog across the field in the park and was making his way up the street towards our house, I was a little ahead of the pack when I heard my spouse say “Wow…you really are getting old, in your younger days you totally would have gone for that Squirrel!” There was a furry grey little guy, quite brash really, sitting a few yards from Lucas, munching on an acorn, completely non-phased by seventy-one pounds of canine that stood rather intently watching him eat.
This lead me to my second thought, I mentioned that the squirrel was like an attractive young woman…in Lucas’ younger years yes, he wholeheartedly would have gone after that bushy rodent and interrupted it’s morning meal. It’s not that he couldn’t pursue it, it’s that he didn’t need to. In one’s younger days the chase is what life was all about…but now, he can stand back and he can appreciate the squirrel in a whole new light. I said to my hubby “You will become enlightened like our old boy one day too….you will see the “squirrel” which for you will be a lovely young thing in Lululemon and you will stop and stare for a moment, you will look back on your youth briefly and reminisce how fun those days were to flirt with such notions. Then you will return to reality and you will realize that if you did go after such a prize and catch it, what would you do with? You would recognize that you are way beyond such antics…so instead, you will look with longing for a few moments and appreciate the sight before you and then you will move on to much more rewarding ideals, like the warm couch at home where you can take a wonderful nap and dream.” When you get to be an old fart you comprehend that in one’s fantasies the outcome is more satisfying, the idea of catching that squirrel would be far more rewarding than the mess and trouble ensnaring one in real life would result in! With age, comes wisdom and my dear old boy has figured things out! He thought “Hey, that is one hell of a juicy looking squirrel, all fattened up for winter… ‘hukuna matata’, I am going home where it is warm and dry!”
No Time To Paws 