You're Not Getting This Year Back, A Lesson in Commitment From a Labrador
YOU'RE NOT GETTING THIS YEAR BACK
There is a strange thing happening to the way we live. We have more choices than almost any generation before us, yet somehow all those choices have made us terrified of actually choosing.
What if there is something better? What if I take this job and hate it? What if I marry this person and change? What if I move and miss home? What if I start the business and lose money? What if I give something everything I have and it doesn't work? What if I commit to this version of my life and somewhere along the way I lose some version of myself I was supposed to become?
So we wait.
We keep one foot out the door. We hang on without really committing. We work jobs we don't particularly want while endlessly thinking about what else we could do. We talk about starting businesses instead of starting them. We save places we want to visit on our phones and never book the flight. We stay in cities we don't love because moving sounds complicated. We hold onto bad relationships that ended years ago and avoid new ones because getting hurt once was quite enough.
We call it being careful. Sometimes it is. Other times we're simply afraid to choose a life because choosing one means accepting that we cannot live every other possible version of it.
That's the part nobody likes to talk about.
Every meaningful decision costs you something. Choosing one person means not choosing everyone else. Building a business means giving up some of the security that comes with working for somebody else. Moving somewhere new means leaving something familiar behind. Loving anything means accepting that eventually you can lose it. Even getting a dog is a spectacularly unfair arrangement when you consider that you're signing up to love something enormously that almost certainly won't live as long as you do. There is no version of a full life where you get to keep everything.
Trying to avoid that reality doesn't save us from loss. It can simply prevent us from gaining very much in the first place. Dogs, fortunately, have never suffered from this particular problem.
A LABRADOR WOULD NEVER SURVIVE A RISK ASSESSMENT
Anyone who has ever lived with a Labrador knows that self-preservation occasionally ranks somewhere below “possible food.”
A Lab will chew through something that appears structurally important to a house because he detected a microscopic remnant of a chicken sandwich on the other side. He will eat objects that have never, at any point in human history, been classified as food. He can be limping dramatically enough to convince you he's dying and then launch himself six feet through the air because someone opened a bag of chips. We know this because our Lab once got his hands on roughly sixty-five pieces of chocolate Halloween candy. Not six. Sixty.
There was apparently no moment during this operation when he looked at the rapidly disappearing mountain of chocolate, candy and wrappers and thought, You know what? I've probably had enough. He committed.
By the time it was over, we were staring down a veterinary emergency that would eventually cost around $10,000. The surgeons removed somewhere around 60-70 pieces of candy and wrappers from his stomach. And a pillow case. Yes. A pillowcase.
Apparently when you're eating bags of Halloween candy, presentation matters.
If a human being had just endured emergency surgery because of an appalling personal decision, there would probably be reflection. Regret. A solemn promise to make better choices. Our Lab looked at us as if we were the idiots.
Was it worth it? HELL YEAH. Best snack I ever had. And given the opportunity, he absolutely would have tried it again the following week. But there is something dogs understand about living that we have managed to complicate beyond recognition. They commit.
WE'VE BECOME VERY GOOD AT KEEPING OUR OPTIONS OPEN
Keeping your options open sounds smart. Nobody wants to be trapped. Nobody wants to wake up five years from now and realize they chose wrong.
The problem is that a life spent permanently preserving every possible option eventually becomes a life where very little has actually been chosen. There is no point at which the universe hands you a folder containing every possible outcome and allows you to select the one with the best ending. At some point, you choose. Then you build. That second part gets overlooked.
We talk constantly about finding the right person, finding your passion, finding the right career, finding where you belong. As though the great things in life are sitting somewhere fully assembled waiting for us to discover them. Most aren't found. They're built.
A great relationship is built through thousands of completely unremarkable days when two people continue choosing each other. A career becomes meaningful because you stay long enough to become good at something or become brave enough to change direction when you know it isn't yours. A business becomes something because somebody keeps showing up when the exciting beginning is over and the reality is considerably harder. A place becomes home because you fill it with people, memories, mistakes and years. And a bond with a dog becomes almost impossible to explain because you build it one ordinary day at a time.
You feed him. He follows you into the bathroom. You take him places. He destroys something expensive. You swear at him. He sleeps beside you. You take a thousand photographs that look virtually identical to everyone else and completely different to you. He gets sick and suddenly there is no amount of money you wouldn't spend if it meant getting him home. Years pass almost unnoticed while all of this is happening. Then one day you realize this ridiculous animal has become part of the architecture of your life. That is what commitment does. It takes ordinary things and, given enough time, turns them into something irreplaceable.
THERE IS ALWAYS A CHANCE IT WON'T WORK
This is where fear usually gets the final word. What if I give everything to something and it fails? It might. Businesses fail. Relationships end. People disappoint us. We trust the wrong people. We can spend years building something and still watch it disappear. Commitment doesn't guarantee the ending. It means you were actually there for the middle.
There is an enormous difference between losing something you had the courage to build and never building it because you were afraid you might lose it. One can break your heart. The other can quietly waste your life.
Dogs don't negotiate that contract. They don't love you cautiously or hold back part of themselves in case something better comes along. They're in. Completely. Anyone who has loved a dog long enough knows where that eventually leads. One day the animal who occupied your house, your car, your camera roll, your schedule and a ridiculous portion of your heart is gone. We know that when we bring them home, and we do it anyway.
Life asks the same thing of us over and over. Love somebody knowing you can get hurt. Start something knowing you can fail. Go somewhere knowing you might miss home. Change direction knowing you might wonder whether you should have stayed. There are no guarantees, and waiting for them doesn't protect you. It only costs you time.
You can recover from being wrong. You can change your mind. You can survive some bruises and scars. What you cannot do is bank all the time you spent waiting and use it later.
Your dog understands that. If there's a door open, he's going through it. If there's somebody to love, he's all in. If there's pounds of Halloween candy sitting unattended in a pillowcase, apparently, he's prepared to accept the consequences. There are worse ways to approach a life.
Commit to something. Build something. Love something enough that losing it someday scares the hell out of you. Have some stories to tell. And when life puts the equivalent of a satchel of Halloween candy in front of you, use slightly better judgment than a Labrador. But don't spend your whole life staring at it.
