Simple Joys
May 27th, 2008 by davidmw
Yesterday I took the dogs to the dog park near my neighborhood. It was their first time at the park, so I was a tad nervous about how they would behave. We walked in the gates and you would have thought Cooper was being murdered. He began to pull and buck at his leash, all the time giving whining complaints that I don’t really think he even knew he was making.
Gunner, of course, was reserved and calm so I slipped him from his leash and he was gone! This drove Cooper nearly to the point of melt-down. An older gentleman urged me to give him his freedom so I unclipped the leash from Cooper’s collar and he was off like a bolt from the blue.
The park is nothing flashy. Basically, it looks like the dog folks have taken over an old sport field. The scoreboards still stand at several points around the fenced in grassy (and muddy!) play area for the dogs. To be blunt, it was simply a large, fenced-in paddock.
The dogs loved it.
My mind went back to the times I have seen children given an expensive gift by an adult only to discard the toy and play with the box. Simple pleasures are enough for a child. Happy to shred and chew the crinkly paper the gift is wrapped in, the child is nonetheless corrected away from this and back to the shiny booping doodad that the paper contained. I’m no longer sure we do our children service in this regard. Continually steered away from the simple, the mundane, the ordinary, we are encouraged to look to the flashy, the shiny, the new.
The average adult is assaulted with around 1000 commercials a day - urging him or her to procure some product or service that will bring them true happiness. For guy targeted advertising, this often takes the form of gorgeous women who drip all over the purchaser because he now wears ‘Axe’ or drives ‘Lexus’ or whatever. Women are shown as radient, beautiful and timeless; wise beyond their years with infantile husbands who need to have the real purchasing decisions made for them. Either way, it’s a play to wish fulfillment.
It’s time to change my wish. I have a wife I love. I have a house that does not leak and a car that does not explode when I drive it. It’s time to go through the wishlist cabinet of my heart and thow away the childish desires for ‘more, shiner, bigger,’ and - like Cooper and Gunner on a slightly rainy Monday - luxuriate in simply being able to run in the muddy paddock with all the other dogs.
Dogs? well, congrats!
The history of the city’s dog park is storied to say the least. Yes, it is built on a series of old sports fields but only after the fields were declared unusable. It seems that they built the fields over an old garbage dump and the ground started settling.
And sometimes you don’t need a field — just mud.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajKid4-3K_0
Amen! Just take a step outside during this time of year and breathe deeply. Close your eyes and take in the smells of spring flowers in bloom, budding trees, fresh cut grass, and the warmth of the sun radiating off of everything around you. Listen to the birds singing their carefree melodies and feel the gentle breeze against your skin. Suddenly, bigger and shinier doesn’t feel like “better.”
Awesome post, David!
Yes ‘dogs!’ We had Gunner, of course, but Cooper was so pathetic and so desperately in need of a home that we took him in too. The settling explains the ‘upper and lower’ nature of the field! And, sink me, if I don’t have the quietest girl in the world actually singing and talking on film!
Ms. Mouse, your comment reminds me of the verse “Consider the lillies of the field, how they grow. They do not toil or spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” It’s in a larger passage (Matt 6:25-34
) that is one of my absolute favorites. Thanks for bringing that back to mind today. 
Hi David,
Thanks for stopping by my blog. I can see we are in similar places right now as we analyze how stuff affects us. You’re right about the shiny and new being attractive, but for me it’s often the used and antique-like that catch me up. It’s the same though, the desire to get more. May God free us from our need for excess.