Dog Walk Philosophy: The Democracy Of Dogs
I walk my dog every morning. Most mornings we walk pretty much the same route. So I decided to give myself a challenge. Find something unique along the path I tread daily and take a photo. Somedays there will be something genuinely new. Others I will have to find a way to shoot the mundane with a new perspective.
Walking Bean is a democratic exercise. He gets one vote and I get one and a half. We get to a corner, he leans in his desired direction and I consider. We get to the next corner, I pull and he considers. Sometimes I acknowledge his vote. Other times I overrule. We need to get home at some point, don't we?
I tend to lean into streets already taken. Bean wants to carve new paths. I have a clock that ticks in the back of my mind. Walk for about an hour, get home, make coffee, maybe read a bit, wake up the wife and kids, and dive into the day officially.
Bean cares not about my clock. Bean doesn't care about my time anxiety. He disregards the broken part of my brain that makes me compulsively early. His only concern is stretching right now into infinitum.
Occasionally, I cede my vote to Bean and let him take the wheel. My only responsibility is holding the leash. We twist and turn onto streets to the point where I'm nearly lost. In that time I allow my mind to wander as far as Bean's feet. In my wandering, I discover memories long lost, philosophize over the mundane, and have ideas for projects that may or may not ever see the light of day.
I'd like to think that Bean is actively fighting my rigidness and anxiety by making me see that it is ok to be aimless; that the little bit of the world that I pretend to control won't spin off its access if I'm not there spinning it like a basketball on my finger.
The truth is Bean is on his time and I'm just holding the leash as he leans into corners.
