When Life Chuckles: A Pup, a Snowstorm, and a New Story.
“I am not the type who rescues stray dogs!”
This was my refrain recently when a scared stray pup streaked across my front lawn in a snow storm. Just hours before the storm blew into town, the pup was scurrying about in the neighborhood, tail tucked and pitiful, clearly cold, hungry, and too afraid to allow human approach. The single-digit night temperatures that followed brought such anguish, imagining the poor creature outside in the arctic wave. How would she make it through? Fast forward, the lucky pup is now rescued, revived, and well-loved. Were she a feline, we would say she clearly dipped into her reserve of nine lives during that snow storm.
Where her story had a tidy, cheerful, evening-by-the-fireplace ending, my own story yawned noisily, stretched its arms overhead, and then promptly threw its back out. What I thought was a brief moment of canine tending became a belabored, lingering note in the greater symphony of my own transition through midlife, and I heard some dissonant notes quietly hiding in the backdrop. How can such a small, not-so-significant moment herald big meaning?
In a word, because while I was settled comfortably into a decades-old, familiar version of myself, the one who is not a stray dog rescuer, Life chuckled at me and showed up with “other plans”. How easy it is to live as if the tasks of learning and growing have long been completed and crossed off the list. We know ourselves to be a certain way in the world and a different version of us is not only unfamiliar, it feels downright surreal. This place of letting go of old ways of being and accepting a new version of self can be a catalyst to the unsettling yet deeply transformational time that often comes with midlife.
My recent conversation with chuckling Life:
· Me - I’m not the type who takes in stray dogs!
· Life – Yeah, just wait. You will be.
· Me – I’m not the type who can live in a home with lots of dog fur!
· Life - Uh huh, just wait. You will be.
· Me – I am not the type who can organize my life around taking care of a dog!
· Life - Say it with me, “Just wait, you will be”.
The pup-in-a-snowstorm moment was not really about whether or not I am the type to take in a stray dog. It was about whether I could say good bye to the previous version of myself who wasn’t and welcome a new version who might be. Indeed, as Sweet Pup further snuggles her way into my life, this new version of me is now telling a new story:
“I didn’t use to be the type who rescues stray dogs, but now I guess I am”
So next time you hear Life chuckling, or a sweet pup runs across your lawn in a snow storm, consider spending some time with the thought “I am now the type who…” and see what new version of you might be ready to tell a new story.
