Go Get The Ball

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I was on a walk today with a friend and her two dogs. One is 3 and the other 12. The younger one, Haley, had brought her favorite ball and was obsessed with my friend throwing or kicking her ball so she could retrieve it. "Go get the ball!" My friend would say. The older dog, who I've known since he too, was a young pup, waddled along behind us, content to just be walking.

For about 15 minutes it was cute watching the dog bound ahead of us. Bound ahead and run back. Back and forth. Then it was like, "enough already" can't you just walk normal and enjoy the surroundings? But no, Haley insisted on playing ball and was intently focused on that one thing. That one game so that she could have been anywhere, doing anything, for her it was all about the ball.

So it got me thinking, about us humans, and the things we obsess over. For good or for bad. To have that intent focus, one something we want, and how everything else becomes blurry when we have our intentions set on one goal. How for those around us, it can be like, "Enough already, have some fun, relax."

But it's hard right? It's hard to find focus and it's hard to let go. And as I was walking along, talking to one of my oldest friends in the ways friends talk - a mix of run-on sentences and jumping back and forth from one topic to another, I thought about the intense focus of the dog running around us but how also completely one-sided it was.

I think about that as I enter a new phase of my own life. An anonymous quote I found online says, "A dog at play has the mind of a wise martial arts master, a mind capable of perfect focus.”

Is focus important? Absolutely. But not at the risk of forgetting everything and ignoring everyone around me. Not this time.

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