SECOND HAND SMOKE

Two days before Christmas the stockings were hung by the chimney with care, chestnuts were roasting on an open fire, sugarplums were head-dancing, and our dogs were tearing apart a little, gray kitten.

'Tis the season.

Living in a more rural area sometimes we unintentionally play host to families of feral cats, this was one of those times--we were not very good hosts.

My son Dave was home for Christmas, and he and his mother were playing in the snow. The tranquility of the moment was disturbed when they saw (and heard) the kitten being worked over pretty well by two of our otherwise friendly dogs, who must have thought they had received an early Christmas present.

Extricating the dog-spit-covered feline was a trick in itself, but the dogs didn't stand a chance against Jean's maternal instincts. The dogs lost their present, and we gained a second cat.

Smokey the cat is now twelve years old, an indoor cat, well-fed, warm and loved. For Smokey to go from very perilous existence in the wild to a protected life in our home he had to go through being used as a pull toy by creatures fifteen times his weight.

To go from what you are now to what you can become, do you also have to be metaphorically pulled apart by the big dogs of life?

Sadly for many of us, that's the case. Smokey would never have experienced the solace in Jean's arms if being held by a human hadn't been infinitely better than the pain of being chomped on by large, canine incisors.

To leave what you currently have, staying must be too painful. That is the root reason anyone would choose to change. As long as you perceive what you have now to be less painful than facing the "dogs" guarding your brighter future, you ain't goin' nowhere.

If Smokey could only have reasoned that once he got through this dog thing, the rest of his life would be better, he might have gone looking for the dogs.

How are you different from Smokey the cat?

To change your job requires facing the dogs of interviews, working with strangers, new policies and procedures and a chance of failure.

To change your house requires facing the dogs of paperwork, meeting new neighbors, leaving old neighbors, arranging for furniture moving, new grocery stores, additional financial obligations.

To change a relationship requires facing the dogs of tears, meeting new people, self-doubt, additional financial obligations and a chance of failure.

Look at all the good things you have in your life and think about the dogs you had to face to get them. Don't leave an even greater future unexplored. Grab a box of treats, a can of citronella spray and wade through the pack.


Lesson: Sometimes to get what's best, we have to experience what's worse.