I was hesitant about Claude at first. My sister begged for him, insisting that a dog was exactly what our tidy, family of clean freaks needed. She shoved photos of his listing in my face and would enthusiastically squeal, “isn’t he sooo cute?” To which I’d obviously agree because it’s a dog and I don’t think it’s possible for a dog to not be cute. My hang-up was that I was thinking pragmatically. “Who’s going to take care of him when we go to university?” I’d say, cringing thinking about the logistics of raising a puppy in a dirty, crowded, student housing shoebox apartment. As her plans became more and more fleshed out, and her ask of adopting him more became more frequent, realistic, and hopeful, I felt the crushing weight of responsibility and it filled me with dread. There’s a Ye quote that goes like “I hate when I’m on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me like oh great now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle.” and that is probably the best way for me to summarize how I felt about any responsibility that wasn’t practical.
Eventually, I gave in on account of multiple reasons: it was nearing her 19th birthday, and she was adamant that she did not want any other gift other than my shared financial investment and caretaking for a puppy. Also, I was on 4 hours of sleep after attending a 36 hour hackathon. In my exhausted state, she’d whittled my reservations down and it was the day after the hackathon, when we welcomed Claude into our home.
One of the most heartbreaking things about someone departing from your life, is realizing all the things you can’t do with them anymore. When Claude joined our family, it was the opposite. Day by day, it would occur to one of us, “oh, now we can dress him up for halloween”, or “let’s learn how to teach him a trick”. Despite the misery of pulling constant all-nighters to soothe the little guy and constantly trailing after him cleaning up accidents, I was enamoured by his fascination for everything with movement, his habitual, uncontained excitement for the presence of people he sees every single day, and his joy for a mundane routine that I’d become jaded to.
Suddenly, everything felt like a miracle. I would watch him jump for joy to eat the same kibble for the 80th time in a row or go on the same daily walk, and think to myself, maybe everything’s going to be fine, maybe what I’m stressed about is actually Not A Big Deal and my never ending desire for The Next Thing is silly, and what I already possess is a rich and fulfilling life. I’ve begun to enjoy my life and appreciate my time here on Earth with a lot more enthusiasm, something that might not have occurred or happened to me if I’d continued to doom and despair at the thought of becoming responsible for the well-being of someone else.
I think the main point of this blog post and what I am trying to get at, is that the most beautiful, worthwhile, and fantastic things in life, the stuff that is miraculous and makes us whole are pursuits that demand something of us. We don’t pray for the wellbeing of our acquaintances, we want that for our **best** friends. A level of friendship that is only earned after a lot of mutually invested time, energy, and emotional vulnerability. Nobody dreams of true love and imagines the flimsy whim of a situationship, we hope for The One, a second heart that dies of old age with us. Everyone intrinsically understands why religion is so sacred to worshippers of all faiths, they're showing up and doing the spiritual work that is asked of them. Commitment is good for us, staying true to our responsibilities, our yesses, our promises, forces us to walk through doors and close some others, this freaks those of us who are addicted to the allure of having many choices. The price we pay for the abundance of optionality is a life unlived, foregone experiences, many hypothetical possibilities but with nothing to show for it.
It takes discipline and consistency and personal sacrifices and energy that might not always be super convenient to expend, and to outsiders the responsibilities we take on such as adopting a dog or pouring ourselves into a hobby may seem frivolous or futile. I’ve come to realize just how much I love doing these things; they take something out of me and give it back ten-fold.
Do the silly stuff, do the serious stuff, do it all for the love of the game.