SHAKE IT UP BABY

Things had gotten pretty darn quiet around the old dog ranch.

The dogs were into their routine; go out in the morning, perform their morning constitution, (I know what that means, but what does that mean?) bark at the horses, eat, sleep, get up and sniff other dog's constitutions, sleep, bark at the horses, and come in for the night only to start all over again in the morning. Pretty much same old, same old.

What can be said about your life, pretty much same old, same old?

Our dogs' well-ordered lives changed the day we brought home, Mugs, the puppy.

Mugs, a goofball hairball, was unaware of the routine. He knew nothing about letting sleeping dogs lie and would jump, lick and nip on the older members of the tribe all day and most of the night (when not enjoying one of his copious constitutions). When the old timers would attempt to get out of harm's way, lest they be licked, nipped and jumped upon to within an inch of their lives, Mugs, being a member of the herding group, would bite rapidly and repeatedly at their fleeing and flailing legs.

The sanctity of the older dogs' feeding dishes was also not honored, turning what used to be a tranquil scene of dogs enjoying a sumptuous meal of compressed corn, poultry and insect by products into a grade school cafeteria with the lunch room monitor missing. These daily inconveniences for the older dogs paled in comparison with the very real situation of rearranging tribal hierarchy. Our alpha dog had to reestablish his dominance; the previous omega dog, at least temporarily, moved up the pecking (literally) order; and the ones in the middle had to reshuffle.

The moment Mugs set his four big, uncoordinated feet on our property, our dogs' days had stopped being the same. Maybe it was for self-preservation, but the older dogs seemed to begin seeing the world through Mugs' eyes. There was a vibrant new life in every animal coupled with a new appreciation of everything around them. Mugs brought stimulating new smells, invigorating new activities, and exciting new relationships into a ho-hum "old" situation. I may be wrong, but if you catch him in the right light, since nutty Mugs arrived even our hound is smiling.

If you don't have a "Mugs" in your life, get one.

Lesson Embrace the crazy; it keeps you sane.

---

IMAGINE THAT

I saw a nature special on TV showing cheetahs miss their prey nine out of ten times. We would be a bit short of cheetahs if they became immobilized just thinking about the length of grass, the heat, the humidity, the extraordinary speed of the antelope and all those giant biting flies that will be around to screw up the next hunt. What kind of National Geographic special would it be if after their seventh miss, the disillusioned cheetahs went back to their den all tigered out, and their fellow cheetahs laughed at them like a bunch of hyenas. Then they spent the rest of the day lion around, taking cat naps, looking like the missing lynx and feline incompetent. (Sorry, got carried away.)

A cheetah does not spend Monday worrying about Tuesday's hunt.

Human beings are the only of the universe's creations that worry about tomorrow's "hunt," because we are the only creatures that possess imagination. (Hooray for us?) Your imagination enables you to do incredible and marvelous things, but the active use of negative imagination can also send you to the home well before your time. Imagination is simply a picture you conjure up in your mind that has no reality attached to it. You conjure; you create. Does your imagination portray you succeeding, or in your mind's eye are you meeting your cellmate Buck for the first time?

When I was in grade school, I had this belief that anybody older than me could beat me up. I didn't know I had this belief until someone older than me beat me up. The Franklin twins did it (Names are changed to protect the innocent--me. After all, they're still older.) The twins, while there were obviously two of them, were only about 1/3 my size, but did I mention they were older?

Every lunch hour for months, I would go out to the playground, and take my expected verbal harassment and physical lumps from the vertically challenged, age-enhanced, double buggers. I'd go home after school, "knowing" what the next day would bring and blaming the little weasels for not only their wompping up on me in the immediate past, but also for a projected rotten evening I was sure to (make myself) have in the immediate future. I wrapped up a perfect victim's day by tossing in bed all night, wide awake, reliving in advance the certain terror that lay in store for me the very next day. (An uncheetah like activity.)

No amount of worry (negative imagination) on my part seemed to have any affect on the actions of the Franklins. (And they, unlike me, were well rested enough to carry out whatever dastardly deeds they devised.) What ever the double nut twins did to me physically was nothing like what I did to myself mentally. I turned my imagination, given me by the forces of good, over to the forces of evil.

I did it. I knew it. Shame on me. Better luck to you.


Lesson: Imagining the best can't hurt; imagining the worst can.

TREE

A man with the chain saw was loose in the forest.

Our need for firewood, the density of the forest around our cabin, and the Forest Service's suggestion that we "thin out" to reduce fire danger, all combined to make me and my chain saw a busy pair.

I have never been big into killing living things. I will use a Dust Buster to suck up house insects and deposit them outside where nature intended them to be. So, I don't take cutting living trees lightly. But because of the above reasons, on many a weekend I put on my Paul Bunyon shirt, Paul Bunyon hat and gloves, petted my Blue Ox Babe and "Bunyonized" our little piece of the forest.

I must admit, some of the thinning out was done for the purposes of a better view from the deck. The other trees picked for execution were those that didn't "look right." Those trees were twisted, bent, too thin, too fat, basically not aesthetically pleasing. I know that doesn't sound like a caring, nature lover, but some cutting needed to be done and to me those were as good criteria as any.

But I didn't touch Barney.

Since I'm not very good at technical scientific tree names, for purposes of identification I'll call this particular tree, Barney. I usually try not to get friendly enough to name a tree I'm going to cut off the face of the earth, but I made an exception for Barney.

Barney met all the short-list criteria for cutting. He was thin, and at about three feet from the ground Barney took a ninety-degree turn. Imperfection of all imperfections, he was growing right outside a large picture window and in all his unmajestic glory, Barney obstructed our view.

I fired up the chain saw, pulled my safety glasses down off my Paul Bunyon hat looked at Barney, shut off the chain saw, put my glasses back up on my Paul Bunyon hat, and went inside to think.

I was determining which trees were perfect and which trees were not. Nature never makes that arbitrary distinction. Do I do the same thing with people? I'm afraid, all too often, I do. How about you? Do you look at people and judge them as too thin, too fat, or too "bent" in some way? I'm not saying you shouldn't judge, I doubt most of us will ever get to that high level of being where we are forever non judgmental, but how does that judgment affect your behavior toward the "imperfect" people?

I decided to leave Barney alone as a reminder to me how much more advanced Mother Nature was then I will ever be. She nurtured Barney just as she did her "perfect" trees.

Over the years we owned the cabin I was granted the privileged to watch Barney slowly and steadily straighten up, even when the heavy snows of winter tried to keep him down. I witnessed that scrawny stick fatten up the closer he got to the sun. He become a Barney to be proud of.

The day we moved out I took one last look over my shoulder at Barney, and I swear he winked at me.

Lesson: Ugly is in the eyes of the beholder.

WHO ME?

When I was asked to write an article for a book on success stories, my first thought was "What can I contribute?" I haven't been trapped in a coal mine and saved 25 of my coworkers. I haven't been on a Super Bowl winning team, adopted ten handicapped children, triumphed over massive head injury or built a multi-million dollar international company from the ground up.

Not only haven't I done any of those things, I don't personally know anybody who would qualify as the classic "success" story. That thought discouraged me until I realized something might be wrong with the classic meaning of success.

A friend had told me he was having more fun ever since he rethought and redefined fun. I think it was time for me to rethink and redefine success.

I decided success is not about winning at sports, finance, business, social status, or overcoming adversity. Success is about each of us doing our best at what we think is important.

Since we all don't believe the same things are important, who is to say each life is or is not a success story? Only we know how far we've come and how far we want to go. We must not allow anyone else to determine our success.

My mother committed 24 hours a day to raising two, clean, God- fearing, vegetable-eating boys. My father was a policeman for 40 years. He kept his nose clean even though he had plenty opportunity to line his pockets with ill-gotten gains. Instead he worked three jobs to insure his children a better life than he had. Successes? You bet.

Millions of people everyday who go about their lives contributing to their community by doing an honest day's work, caring for their families, worshiping what's in their heart to worship, and being gentle to others and the environment are successes. The family across the street that takes in foster children, the man from the office who works with the elderly on the weekends, the friend who suffers illnesses courageously, people who leave the world just a little better than when they came - those should be our heroes. These people are our genuine success stories, and they are everywhere we look.

We each have within us an extraordinary success story. So what if nobody else wants to hear it or Reader's Digest won't print it. The stories are ours, and nobody can take away from us the successes we are when we're doing our best at what we feel is important. You may have wanted to be like the late Paul Newman and ended up more like Alfred E. but you're a a success if you are the best Alfred E. you can be.

Lesson: You're most successful when doing your best at what you feel is important.