Chapter 2
Better together
We'd love them anyway, because that's our nature. But there's a distinct advantage to having these special animals in our lives: they make our lives more interesting, more fun, more rich, and vastly more satisfying. In short, we are better together.
Loving them, and being loved in return, makes us feel good;
and that changes everything.
The way I understand it now, the key element is this: loving them, and being loved in return, makes us feel good; and that changes everything.
I had no idea of the tremendous power of this dynamic at the time, but I was dimly aware that Miss Lilly wasn't just company in my otherwise solitary life. Nor was she much of a protector. She'd happily have let almost anyone into the house with a welcoming smile and a wagging tail. She did look rather fearsome, so to anyone who didn't know or like dogs, her mere presence in our yard or on our walks was a deterrent; but that was all a façade. She was a dog who seldom met a person she didn't like. (And when she didn't like someone, I knew to take note.)
I often called Miss Lilly my dog fairy because she seemed so other-worldly to me, when in reality she was simply much more light and carefree than me. (My sister suggested that perhaps I should consider Miss Lilly as my fairy dogmother. ☺︎) She had a great smile, and she smiled often. One of the reasons I think she had a heaping helping of Staffie in her background was because her whole head would crack open in a gigantic grin, what I think of as the Staffie smile.
I wish dogs had a laugh that human ears could hear, because I believe she loved to laugh. She was a dog who exuded joy and a great sense of fun when she felt safe and secure. Those are qualities I inherited in spades from my dad but that I'd steadily lost along the way through childhood into adulthood, and particularly in my professional life. Life just wasn't fun anymore — until Miss Lilly came along.
...
The power of feeling good is the key to everything.
I want to finish this chapter with some more comments about the power of feeling good, because it is the key to everything.
When we take the time to feel good first, before making any decisions, before taking any actions, we open to the greater part of ourselves, which is where our creativity and courage reside, and from where comes our inspiration and our impetus to act on it.
When I don't feel good, I immediately dismiss what may be good ideas — or I don't have them at all. But when I feel good, good ideas pop effortlessly into my mind; and before too long, others drop in to support or supplement them. Ah, but if I harbor any contradictory thoughts about the thing I'm wanting to create, I slow, stymie, or even subvert my progress, and the thing I want is either very slow to materialize, or it never arrives at all. When I feel good, I'm so sure of these good ideas that I happily, enthusiastically head in that direction, proceeding with absolute confidence as I move steadily and unwaveringly toward whatever it is that I'm wanting to create.
When we feel good, we see all the good things we already have in our lives, and that we are already surrounded by things we love, as we enjoy the prospect of receiving even more.
When I don't feel good, I may not even look around me; and if I do, I see only what I don't have. But when I feel good, I'm astonished by what I already have around me, all without me even trying. The natural world is particularly good at that cheeky little trick: no matter the season, I'm always surrounded by wonderful things I've done absolutely nothing to create, earn, or otherwise “deserve.” We all are. All the time. Whether we notice it or not. The animals we love are another great example of how we are already enveloped by lovely things.
When we feel good, we see possibilities that couldn't occur to us when we're closed off from this inspiration, when we don't feel good.
When I feel good, I see clearly where I want to go, and I fully expect to get there. I may not yet see the entire path to my destination, but the first step is obvious; and from there, the next and the next, and the one after that… I know where I'm going and that I will inevitably arrive, and that the journey itself will be wonderful!
When we feel good, worry just can't abide, so we proceed with confidence and enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm is infectious, so when we feel good and act from that place of confidence, we attract to us the very people who are best able to help us achieve our goals. Conversations spontaneously occur that create wonderful and helpful connections and which expand our horizons even further as others share their inspirations with us.
When we feel good, thoughts arise that hadn't occurred to us before, and impulses to do things that, in the moment, may seem far removed from our goal, but which, in retrospect, were the perfect next step toward our goal.
Once I surrendered to “the scenic route,” these unusual or unexpected twists and turns got to be rather fun. Once I learned to trust the process and give myself over to it, things got very interesting! And that is the stuff of life. Not only do we not need to fear or resist these unexpected occurrences, we can take them as an indication that we're on the right track!
When we feel good, our goals may even change, as we imagine a much bigger life for ourselves than we ever could have dreamed in our closed-off state of worry, doubt, and limitations.
When I'm in that open, feel-good state of mind, it's a common experience for me to have thoughts along the way that make what I started out to do even better. Those deviations from the original course used to really bother me, as I thought that made me weak-minded, indecisive, or uncommitted. Now I look forward to these occurrences. Whether I'm writing or gardening or cooking or setting out on a hike or treating a patient, I often revise my original thought. My first thought is just that: initial, simply a starting point. A fundamentally good idea that might be made even better, if I let it.
When we feel good, we thus start to become all that we were always meant to be. At first, we may get only brief glimpses, but the more we do it and the longer we stay there each time, the more at home we become with this greater self, this bigger life, and the less we doubt both our worthiness and its inevitability.
The more we give our small selves over to it, the faster our lives change for the better. When we become stable in this feel-good state of mind, being there most of the time, our lives are transformed into something barely imaginable and practically unrecognizable from here and now.
That is the awesome power of feeling good.
And for us animal lovers, our animals are one of the fastest and surest routes to this feel-good state. They're a path of least resistance for us because we love them and we enjoy spending time with them.
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