A few weeks ago I shared a spiritual and/or common sense life lesson I learned while walking Lily and Lola. Guess what, there's more.
As you can see by the enclosed picture, Lily and Lola don't just have problems with distractions and wandering. They also have issues with entanglements.
Most of the time they are simultaneously doing their own things which is why my arms have grown longer over their lifetime.
Lola is obsessed with birds and bugs but will ignore most of them however she occasionally encounters a magical flying/hopping object that requires her immediate and enthusiastic attention which ends up looking like a sudden leap to the right. Lily favors the left where her nose is to the pavement and she is living life vicariously through other dogs, humans, wildlife and litterers.
But when they get together in double single-minded focus they are capable of moving me, and I mean literally. Just try to pull 140 pounds of unbridled yet focused enthusiasm aware from a truly odoriferous object on the path or carelessly tossed waffles or biscuits. (Yes, we've encountered both.)
So that brings me to my thoughts about entangling myself with others. I do it entirely too much. Especially when drama whispers in a loud offstage one-liner. If I had a dollar for every time my emotions whirled out of control over someone else's issues or problems I'd be a rich woman. Oh, I can ignore some drama...most of it actually. But every once in awhile a situation so needy of my time crops up and I stop, turn, tangle myself in it and leap right. Or I spend sometimes too much time with my senses focused on others' stuff that I miss the whole point of a walk on a perfect sunshiney day and get caught up in garbage that wasn't my mess to clean up.
