Life lessons from a Doxie

The dreamboat and I got a puppy a little while ago, and she’s 12 weeks old now. She’s a miniature Daschund, a wiener dog, and I did a little research on the breed when we were deciding whether to get her or not. Apparently Mini Daschunds were bred in Germany to hunt rabbits, because they’re small enough to get down a rabbit hole. They’re diggers, they’re sniffers, and they’re great at bringing little furry things back to you. When we first brought Stella home, she was shy and sleepy. A little whiny. Now, 3 weeks later, she’s grown into a playful little puppy with a personality all her own. She’s fierce and has springy legs, which she uses to jump onto my shoulder and bite my face when I have her next to me on the couch watching Gilmore Girls. She likes to go outside and smell everything, and reminds me of a little wiener-shaped inspector Clousseau finding clues to solve a mystery; one leads to another. This morning I had her on a blanket on the couch, and she was digging frantically at it, like she knows there’s something for her if she just digs deep enough. Stella doesn’t have access to the internet, and can’t know what her breed has been used for for centuries, but nonetheless, she is becoming what she was created to be.
So I got to thinking: what about us? We’re born, we play, we work…and some of us are lucky enough to find our purpose and fulfill it during our lifetimes. We spend millions of dollars on books, self-help seminars and therapy to find out what it is we’re meant to do. When I look at my puppy, it’s glaringly apparent that she overthinks nothing. She has instincts and she follows them, simple as that. She doesn’t worry about whether it’s socially acceptable to jump high, or whether there’s a guarantee that digging in the blanket will get her exactly what she wants. She just jumps and digs. Could it possibly be that simple for us? If we could forget the rules, forget financial reward, and forget the rules our parents/teachers/peers pushed on us, what would we do? If we never worried about failure, what would we try?
I’m a slow learner I guess, and I’ve tried out a handful of careers. I think about money, about prestige, about acceptance from people I really don’t know or respect anyway. I have found lots of careers that kind of worked, and lots that didn’t work at all. I’ve been married and divorced, and married again. I’ve lived in different cities, and different provinces. In 11 days I’ll be 31 years old, and I think there’s one thing I know. Following my instincts will get me farther in relationships, in vocations, and in life. I, like Stella, was made with a purpose. And maybe I don’t have to figure out what that is, maybe I just have to BE.