"In every thing give thanks," part 2

I have never been a "dog person". Notwithstanding my newish belief that "all things are One," and with all due apologies to dog lovers everywhere, I have always found dogs generally unpleasant, and continue to do so. There are exceptions, of course, but they tend to be smaller dogs closer in size and temperament to cats. Why do I like cats better? They’re quieter and they usually stay the heck out of my way.

Dogs make noise, and I generally don’t like noise. I like quiet. It doesn’t have to be perfect silence, but a lack of obtrusive noise is always welcome.

In my new neighborhood in San Diego there is a dog–probably a small one, to be sure–that is left outside, fenced in or tied up, at all hours of the day and night. He seems to "bark" at the slightest stimulus. I put "bark" in quotes because his bark is closer to a yelp. As annoying as continual barking can be, continual yelping gets on my nerves even more.

I am an early riser, with or without barking dogs. I mean very early. I’m usually up by 2:00 AM. I just like the early morning hours better than any other, the same way others prefer other times of the day. Well, this morning (Sunday, July 3, 2011) I decided I would find this yelping dog and undertake whatever had to be done–without harming the dog, of course–to abate its level of noise pollution. I heard him yelp about 3:00 AM and went out to look for him. And then he became quiet.

Given the volume and angle of the sound of his yelp as heard from my apartment, I inferred that if I didn’t find him, or at least hear him, within my immediate block, I wasn’t going to find him then. So I took a tour about the block and came home. And as I sat down for a moment in my living room, the question came to me:

Has it ever occurred to you to stop complaining about hearing this dog and be grateful you can hear at all?

Well, no, actually, it hadn’t–until then. I’m grateful to be able to see at all, because my eyesight has never been good. I’m grateful that my vision doesn’t seem to have gotten any worse with age, as it might well have done. But apart from that–and like most people, I suspect–I tend to be grateful for some sensory stimuli and ungrateful for others. I tend to be grateful for graceful classical music, sweet floral fragrances, soft, gentle breezes, and so on. But I tend to be ungrateful for yelping dogs, foul odors, and cold, raw winds.

The Infinite has chosen to manifest a world full of all kinds of sensory inputs, and people to love and detest each and all of them. But as long as our bodies persist, which would we prefer: to hear some sounds we don’t like, or not to be able to hear at all? To see some sights we don’t like, or not to be able to see at all? Assuming we don’t detest every sound we hear or every sight we see, the answer seems obvious.

"In every thing give thanks," the New Testament exhorts us (I Thessalonians 5:18), and we might well take that advice the next time we see an unwelcome sight, hear an untimely and unwelcome noise, feel a chill wind, or what have you.