When was the last time you felt relaxed after reviewing your social media feeds?
I would guess rarely, if ever. Don’t get me wrong, I like to keep up with social media (despite its many fallacies) just as much as the next person, but I’ve had an interesting revelation and to paraphrase the poet Robert Frost, it has made all the difference. What happened? I rediscovered the world through my dog’s nose.
It was 6:00 am, a bitter cold New England morning, and I was bundled up walking my dog Rocco waiting for him to finish his walk. I was anxiously awaiting my return to my cozy living room when I noticed him lifting his nose in the air, sniffing the wind. “What on earth could he be smelling in this frigid air?” I wondered. Then I realized – spring was arriving! Rocco could smell the earth thawing into mud, the wind shifting, the birds coming alive, and the water warming. When I followed his nose and looked down, I saw the tiniest sprigs of grass poking through the hardened earth. “Well, well” I thought, “Look what his nose just taught me”.
Then it was game on. I paid attention. What would my dog show me today? I began to look at my surroundings in an entirely new light. I stopped taking my phone on our walks. I stopped wearing earbuds. With my dog as my guide, I rediscovered a wonderful world. My senses reopened, my powers of observation were refreshed, and memories of spring as a little girl came flooding back.
Look! A thin skin of ice melted on the canal, and I remembered placing popsicle sticks in the rippling stream of water running just under the melting lip of a snowbank.
Smell! I watched the grass poking its way through the mud and remembered the sound of my father’s lawn mower and the smell of newly mown grass.
Listen! The birds were singing on a cold morning and suddenly I was sitting on the wooden steps of my childhood home, waiting for summer to come.
It was a wonderful reawakening.
Let’s face it. We are all exhausted trying to cope with the daily unpredictability of relentless noise assaulting us from every direction. You don’t need to own a dog, you can let Rocco’s nose show you the way to a calmer, more serene space. Rocco is no longer with us, but his cherished lessons live on.
Thanks, buddy. It has made all the difference.