Lessons from my Dog – Just Because
Certain questions seem to polarise us – are you an Early Bird or a Night Owl? Do you prefer Tea or Coffee? Marmite – love it or hate it? But the question which polarises us perhaps more than any other is the one my two younger brothers put to my then boyfriend, now husband, sitting either side of him, with expressions of polite suspicion on their faces. Was he a cat or a dog person? This was a test I knew he would fail. My family had what must have been the world’s most feral tabby cat, called Muppet, and we were equally feral in our love for her. We were most definitely a Cat Clan. My husband however harboured a childhood dream of owning a dog and declared himself to be a fully fledged dog lover. My brothers have since forgiven him but my husband remembers this as a pivotal moment.
Fast forward to January 2016 and I had my own watershed moment. I became a dog owner to Max. Now at this point, you’re probably wondering why the Head is waxing lyrical about her newfound fondness for canines – and that would be a very valid question. The reason I want to talk about him is because I have actually learnt a lot of lessons from Max and I thought I would share some of them with you, the last being the critical one.
The first is that whatever firmly ingrained ideas we might have about ourselves, they are possibly untrue. I was a Cat lover who abhorred the slavish obsequiousness of dogs. Now I am a fully paid up member of the Dog Die Hards. I was never especially sporty at school or university but at 34 I discovered running – and running with Max in the Chiltern Hills or our local woods is now a highlight of my weekends.
The second is that we can be utterly convinced that a challenging situation is here forever, and yet with the passing of time our perspective changes completely. In all honesty, I had my doubts about owning a dog. For the first couple of months I struggled through evening walks terrified he would never come back on recall and wondering how on earth I would juggle work, family life and a highly energetic dog. Now, I could not imagine life without him. What used to be a source of stress is now a source of absolute joy. However much we believe we will always feel a particular way, perspectives can always shift, even quite dramatically, with time and experience.
But the biggest thing Max has reminded me of on a daily basis is the importance of living in the moment. Max doesn’t understand tiredness. He doesn’t understand deadlines. He doesn’t understand stress. Except on Guy Fawkes Night. What Max understands is what he’s doing right now, daily pleasures, and having fun. There’s a poem by the American poet Walt Whitman about animals and it’s one I sometimes think about when I need perspective and balance. I’ll read you the opening stanza:
I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that ‘equals should be treated equally; and un-equals unequally.’ And that on this basis, humans were justified in using animals for their own purposes – because animals act on instinct whereas humans possess rational thought. Rational thought is what has produced so many incredible human achievements from mathematics to politics, but human capacity for thought sometimes prevents us from just living in the moment. Human beings spend far too much of their time living in the past or the future rather than the here and now. When we are young we dream and also agonise about our future lives. We count the number of sleeps until our birthdays or the next school holidays; we love Fridays because they usher in the weekend and hate Mondays because it’s a long wait till the next one. We dream and worry about future plans and careers. When we are older, we seem to spend more of our time looking backwards, reminiscing about the past, sometimes nostalgically, sometimes with regret and wishing we could have our time again. We should be more like Max – and spend more time living mindfully in the present. Most stressful experiences such as exams, job interviews, coursework and competitions are much worse in the anticipation than the experience. Thinking about work is ten times worse than actually doing work. Actually doing work is often very enjoyable. If your attitude to work is just to survive it, you are wasting about 71% of your time – 5 out of 7 days.
However, just telling our pupils to Enjoy the Moment or Live in the Present is a frankly a bit trite. I may as well say ‘switch off 90% of your thoughts’ because chances are they have something to do with the future or the past. Controlling your brain to such an extent that you never worry about the future would be a superhuman feat. Living solely in the present without a thought for tomorrow is probably also dangerously unwise. If we did that some of us might end up living out our days glued to Netflix whilst inhaling donuts by the crate load. Not really a recipe for long term happiness.
Again, we can take inspiration from Aristotle to understand how we can live wisely in the present. Aristotle divided human actions into two distinct types. Telic and Atelic actions. In Greek the word “telos” means end or goal. So a telic action is one you perform with a bigger goal in mind. Examples of telic actions would be tidying your room, revising for a test, training for a race, taking the bus to school, buying a present for a friend. All these actions are exhaustible, in other words they have a finite end – a tidy room, the completion of the race, your arrival at school. They may be pleasurable – work is often pleasurable when you are in a full state of flow – but the pleasure is a side benefit. You do these actions primarily because you want to achieve something and that is where the real satisfaction comes. But once telic actions are completed, the pleasure can be short lived. The pleasure of a prize, a new job, a medal is short lived and the hunt for a new goal is then on. One of the questions I would love to put to Kate and a Helen Richardson-Walsh, 2016 gold medal winners GB Hockey Team at the Rio Olympics, when they visit South Hampstead this term is this: What does it feel like to have won a gold medal not on the evening itself, not the next day. But weeks and months afterwards?
An atelic action is one which does not aim at any particular goal, which you might do purely for pleasure. Going for a run in the Autumn leaves like Max – just because. Eating food for pleasure not just fuel. Reading a book because you want to, not because you have to. Conversing with people for idle conversation as opposed to having a meeting. Concentrating in a lesson because it’s interesting rather than because you have to take an exam in a few months. Education is both telic and atelic – you learn because you have to (and you will no doubt enjoy the fruits of that in results, university destinations and ultimately careers; and more broadly in the skills you develop). But education cannot be just about endpoints. Learning is an end in itself. My dog Max runs in leaves and frolics in long grass just because he wants to. Sometimes there is a “telos” at stake – another dog, a ball, a squirrel. But mostly he runs for the sake of running. Pursuing goals is of course often extremely satisfying. We all need dreams to aspire to. Challenges catalyse us into action. But to have perspective and balance in your life, sometimes you need to forget about end goals and embrace the Just Because. This, incidentally was the British mountaineer Edward Mallory’s reason for climbing Mount Everest in 1952 – ‘because it’s there’. Whatever your dreams and ambitions, don’t forget the Just Because.
Blog post by Vicky Bingham, Headmistress from 2017 to 2023.