By Ariel Woodruff Spring is here at last. The crocuses nod their dewy heads each morning, in time to the green song of the garden’s newest choristers, unschooled, yet enthusiastic fledglings. Cotton candy blossoms cap the trees, fragrant as any spun-sugar treat, more beautiful still. Puppies gambol on tender lawns. Spring, the season of promise. With its advent, we look forward to a brilliant summer, to new beginnings, to a fresh start. Yes, we look forward, ever forward. It was in this spirit of expectation that I set out on a run a few weeks ago. One might say, in fact, that I was over-eager. I wanted to finish a good workout, to make marked progress in my “getting in shape” plan for the summer – I’m frequently upstaged by my beautiful dogs each year, but I was planning, by Jove, to give them some competition this time! – in short, I wanted to be done with the chore before I had even begun. I wanted to see the results. Yet some trick of fate led me to the
mouth of a trail I had overlooked in my nine-years-and-counting
running ca-reer. Innocuous enough, it opened just at the side
of a tranquil road, the same road I used to drive to my favorite
park every day. On this day, I stopped the car – for no conscious reason
I could name – laced
up my Nikes, and plunged in. But not, of course, before jamming
the earbuds of my Ipod as far into my ear canals as they could
go, pumping up the volume, and preparing to rely on a steady techno
beat to carry me through my workout in a state of adrenaline-fed
abstraction. I was met almost immediately with a blinding headache, a migraine that pounded in time to my every step, and to the synthesized singer’s repeated requests that I “call on” him. At first, I thought I might be sick. I considered turning back, ending my workout, and giving it up for a bad job. Instead, I tentatively removed my headphones. I heard gentle birdsong, the scolding of squirrels, the soft shoosh of wind through new leaves. I heard my own, rhythmic breathing, a sound I realized, with some shock, I hadn’t heard in workouts for nearly a year, so reliant I had become on my Ipod. And the things I saw; a verdant cathedral of treetops threw stained-glass patterns on the spongy, loamy earth. Tiny wildflowers sprang up about my feet. A glittering creek meandered through a thicket, quite as quaint and Edenic as any Disney-made paradise. How was it that I had lived nearly my entire life in this city, and had never once realized the secret garden it concealed? I was consumed with the need to share this discovery with someone; someone that would understand how special this place was, someone who would not have the desire, as I had, to rush through it as a path to something or somewhere else, as a means to an end, but to take it for what it was. Someone who would be willing to teach me, by example, to be present in the fullness of the moment. You understand then. Of course you do. Why I went back home and got my dogs. • • • • • I
think, even as dog people - those individuals lucky enough to
share life with creatures that are oft celebrated for their uncompromising
ability to live in the moment - we nevertheless cannot help but
fall victim, at times, to the insidious draw of anticipation.
In itself, anticipation is not such a bad thing; indeed, it is
a powerful motivational force, and as such, can do a great amount
of good. A moderate amount of this kind of thinking is what and
drives us to succeed and improve our programs. The danger in
anticipation is when we let it become the overwhelming force
in our day-to-day lives. Perhaps we are thinking, at each waking
moment, about our next show prospect, or that next litter of
puppies, or that next win. It is that amorphous “next” that
is going to take us to where we will, this time, yes, this time,
feel truly fulfilled. Perhaps we are thinking, “that is
when my career will really begin. That is when I will feel I
have arrived. That is when I can breathe a sigh of relief and
say, ‘my life starts now.’” Your life is
now. This is not a dress rehearsal. It is this very moment. It
is all that you have and do not have, it is all of your accomplishments
and all of your imperfections, and it is gloriously, deliciously,
meaningfully now. • • • • • As I drove home to pick up my dogs, I thought of an earlier morning, one just on the cusp of spring. Kimi had run out into the yard, and found, on the patio, a single tremulous, tentative patch of lemon sunlight, and she had lain in it. No, not merely lain; basked. She had thrown her legs blissfully into the air, exposed her cream belly, and relaxed her jaws into a smile of pure delight. It might have been the most powerful ray in the Caribbean, for her pose. She was not thinking, “I can’t wait until we get some real sun,” or “this day would be perfect if only there weren’t that breeze pushing those clouds my way.” For her, it was real sun. The best sun. The only sun. The day was perfect. And she enjoyed it. Thus, she and her housemate were the perfect companions for my return to the woodsy retreat I had stumbled upon. We ambled. We took the time to smell, not only proverbial roses, but literal wildflowers. We witnessed a magnificent bald eagle alight in the branches just above our heads – a bald eagle, in our little metropolitan city! We splashed through mud. We explored detours. We took our time. We were ourselves, together, happy to be no more and no less than simply the best of company. A perfect day. And so, I challenge you, as I challenge myself this spring, to look to your dogs as your teachers, and enjoy the now. Enjoy this season, not just because of its fabled promise, but because it is spring.
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