Year of the Dog

One of my girlfriends told me the beginning of 2018 had been so un-impressive, she was starting the year over on the Lunar New Year. Since my January-and-a-half has also been rough, I’ve decided to do the same. This is the Year of the Dog. I am completely on board with this. Dogs are typically loyal, honest, selfless, and in our house they are also always hungry and on complicated medication schedules because some things just run in the family.

Today is the day of the week the dogs and I go for a forty-five minute car ride to avoid the gardener induced panic attack experienced by Levi. Or you might know it by its nickname: Thursday. As the guys and I headed south on Atlantic Boulevard this morning, I noticed red banners and lanterns hanging outside the shops in celebration on the New Year. I focused on trying to come up with a word of intention for my new, new year.  The best I could come up with was “better, maybe?” which seemed not specific enough.

For a mile or two as we drove, we followed a guy in a brown Hyundai Solaris with a bumper sticker that read “My other vehicle is the Mahayana.“ An extremely simplistic way to explain Mahayana Buddhism’s deal is that we should seek to help end the suffering of all sentient beings. Sentient beings would include just about everyone I know and definitely all of the animals. I often look for God in the voices of other people and maybe today, I was reading a little God message on a bumper sticker on a dusty, compact car.

The last few weeks have felt like half of the folks I know are in leaky lifeboats with the other half of us swimming from boat to boat to try to help bail. In honor of the Year of the Dog and because I can’t swim, let’s say I’m dog paddling from boat to boat and doing what I can. Sometimes all we can do is keep bailing.