Life with Siberian Huskies
The Journey is more important than the destination
Living in the moment
Dogs live in the moment:
If you follow the famous mushers like Martin Buser (4-time Iditarod winner), this is something you’re going to hear often.
It’s one of those sayings that is easily passed by without much thought. In fact, it’s taken me 3 years of constant living and working with my dogs to finally realize what a loaded statement it is.
To break it down properly it has many parts. It’s easy to say, but much harder to do. Especially if you are a human. You see, dogs have this ability to ignore stress for the most part. They wake up each morning with no expectations or worries of how their day will go.
It might go fine, and then again it might not. But either way they can’t control it, so each morning they wake up to a clean slate. What happened yesterday is gone… and long forgotten. They don’t go through their day worrying about what tomorrow will bring either. For tomorrow isn’t here yet, so why dwell on it.
When it’s time to play, they play hard. In fact, everything they do is done at one hundred percent of their ability. When they lay down at night to sleep, it’s peaceful because there are no worries about tomorrow. That is truly living in the moment.
Each and every moment is precious even though I don’t think they realize it. They just live life naturally, unencumbered by higher intellect and reasoning that people have.
That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them. I’ve spent a lot of stressful nights worrying about the next day, or week ahead. After three years I’m slowly learning to let go of what I can’t control. It’s going to be what it is no matter how much I worry about it. I only worry and try to fix what I can control.
I sleep a lot better these days. My dogs are such a comfort to me the more I learn how they think. They teach us if we just pay attention to every little thing they do. We play, work, and sleep as one happy family. Tomorrow will be what it is. I’m learning to enjoy each and every moment I have left.
For tomorrow may never come.
TJ
Life with Siberian Huskies 