I post about my dog, and our adventures together, on Instagram. I’ve been doing so since I adopted him when he was a puppy. Sometimes I blog about him here, like when he went into his crate on his own, or after I’d had him for only 4 days, and the change that was already happening.
I was thinking about our adventures while on an easy morning stroll with him, how far we’ve come as a team, how much we’ve each grown, and how much I’ve changed since adopting him. Wandering a local park, he stopped, staring at a rabbit. The rabbit stayed still a few minutes, then bolted into bushes behind a fence and disappeared. My dog went up to the fence, and sniffed, and looked, and then turned and started following the trail the rabbit had left behind.
A strange feeling overcame me as he lead me in a zig-zag pattern, tracking the rabbit’s path through the park: jealously.
Jealously is not something with which I am deeply familiar, and I’m not sure if it was pure jealousy, or a mix of jealousy and envy.
Why was I jealous, or a mix of jealousy and envy, at my dog as it tracked the whereabouts of the rabbit?
Because the world disappears for my dog when he’s on a scent, or when he’s engaged in sniffing.
I learned this during his deep adolescence phase, and deep fear periods when his reactivity was at its worst. Find the right scent, and that immediately becomes his focus. He does not care about other dogs barking at him. He does not care about bicyclists and skateboarders zipping past, which is an achievement for a herding breed. He doesn’t care about anything other than tracking the scent.
I’ve made a kind of game out of it that we play on hiking trails. There isn’t always enough room, so we will step off. I will tell my dog to “check it” if it is winter and there are foot prints in the snow, or I will tell him “find it,” and either way he will immediately put his nose to the ground and start following the footprints off the trail, or just sniff off the trail. Lately, he’s done this until the other people and dogs pass, and then he moves to get back on the trail.
I don’t have an activity like that.
I don’t have an activity where the world disappears for me.
I don’t have an activity I can joyfully get lost in.
As he moved to the bushes that line the far end of the park, I started listing all the activities I’ve done:
- Swim team
- Girl scouts
- Riding bikes
- Skateboarding
- T-ball
- Basketball camp
- Recreational basketball
- Recreational softball
- Dodgeball League
- Ultimate Frisbee
- Indoor soccer
- Outdoor soccer
- Hiking
- Running
- Trail running
- Coloring
- Cleaning
- Yard work
- Reading
- Playing drums
- Writing
At certain points in my life, I have gotten lost in these activities. The first time I got laid off, I would go out and rake yard clippings. It was both soothing and gratifying to rake a couple of rows, and see the difference, and more so once the yard had been raked and the bags of clippings lined up.
Sports became a way for me to quickly meet people every time I moved. I went to work, and then I played sports after work. The sports varied by season, and I was often playing at least two sports a season. Sports surrounded me with other people. People who worked different jobs at different companies. People who worked seasonal jobs. People who didn’t work.
It didn’t matter. We shared a love for the game, being outdoors, and learning. I was terrible at Ultimate Frisbee when I started. I still can’t flick. But I will lay out for a catch, whether to move the frisbee forward or score. I was always good at defense in soccer. I put my body in the way. I clear. I pay attention to what’s going on and quickly adjust for a corner.
For those 60 or 90 minutes or so, two or three times a week, the world did disappear.
Perhaps it was easier in the Before Times. Perhaps I didn’t know as much in the Before Times, or simply didn’t know better. Perhaps I even took playing sports for granted. Perhaps I didn’t consider aging, and how your body doesn’t heal from injuries as quickly. How your body betrays you in subtle ways.
As we made our way home, it occurred to me that I may have reached a stage in life where I need to find new activities, and that may mean learning brand new things. Brand new things with no similar prior knowledge from which to draw and connect dots.
Sports are very similar. There are generally 2 opposing sides, and the goal is generally for your side to score more points of some kind than the other side within a specified period of time. That time can be measured differently, such as innings or quarters, but there is an end.
In other words, most sports follow a similar framework, so if you’ve played at least one sport, you can pick up the generalities quickly, and refine the details as you.
If you have no framework to start, then you are learning something brand new. You are starting from scratch.
That is scary. And humbling.
By the time we got home, my jealousy and envy of my dog’s one activity where the world disappears for him, had transformed into curiosity. It will likely take trial and error for me to find an activity where the world disappears for me, even for a little while. Perhaps I do the activity already, but haven’t thought of it this way.