Sometimes We Need to Step on the Crunchy Leaves

My dog Max is an Hungarian Vizsla, with the natural-born skills of a hunter, pointer, retriever. Although he has never been trained, he exhibits all the instincts of his breed.

Recently I observed another of Max's skills. We just moved to a new neighborhood. There are different kinds of trees on our new street. The sidewalks are littered with large brown and yellow leaves which crunch when you walk on them.

The other morning Max and I were taking our morning constitutional. As we walked, I became aware that each of my footsteps was making snap, crackle, and pop noises as I stepped on the dead leaves. Max, on his leash just a few feet ahead of me, was making no sound at all. I started paying closer attention and realized that he was negotiating a silent pathway through the fallen leaves. I tried to avoid them too. It was hard. My big old size 10s were hitting more leaves than they were missing. Meanwhile, Max was trotting a perfectly silent path on four paws as I struggled on two.

It made me think about the fact that try as we might, we are likely to run into some painful experiences. We can't always walk between the drops and we can't always stealth our way around the crunchy and painful emotional leaves that clutter our lives.

With that truth, I once again realized that the missing link in so many of our lives is not so much what we know, but what we don't. In our zeal to protect our children from the crunchy leaves, we don't always allow or teach them how to deal with painful emotions when they occur.

If there is a universal truth, it is that in order to be an adult, you must first be a child. Not to be silly, but with that fact established, it also follows that many of the lessons we learn as children stay attached to us as we enter adulthood. On the positive side, those attachments will be seen as life-enhancing skills to guide us along the way. On the negative side of the ledger, some will be perceived as "excess baggage."

As children, almost everything we are told about painful emotions implies that we shouldn't have them at all, and if we do, by gosh, we should have them alone. We definitely shouldn't burden others; and we should put on a happy face; and let a smile be our umbrella; and laugh though our heart is breaking. Each of those clichés, whether from song, verse, or urban legend, attempts to move us away from our natural instinct, which is to be emotionally honest.

Max' instincts of smell, sight, and sound propel him to hunt. When game is afoot, every fiber of his being is directed to that end. It is nearly impossible to distract him from his self-appointed task. It makes no sense at all to try to get Max to be anything other than what he is. To do so would put him in conflict with his nature.

The idea that we shouldn't feel sad or bad when something sad or bad happens is one of those "excess baggage" ideas that needs to be jettisoned. Then we can follow our own natural instincts to deal effectively with the losses that affect our lives.

Max knows not to step on the crunchy leaves, lest he alert the prey. Children, in a perfectly parallel and opposite truth, understand that their sad emotions must be vocalized and must be heard and acknowledged by others. They do that until the big people teach them not to. Please give them back their rightful expression of emotional truth, and while you're at it, reclaim your own. Go ahead, move towards those emotions when they are the truth.

Do it now. Follow your children, they will show you how. They already know - by nature.