Why it’s important to clean up your dog poo
I went on a walk with my Dad to a nature park recently. There was a sign there that urged owners to clean up their dog’s waste because it provides nutrients for bad vegetation to grow, like thick grass and weeds, as opposed to more delicate & unique flowers. Now I do like me some lavenders, so let’s talk about why you should clean up your dog’s doodoo.
Stoic philosophy is a popular school of thought which held a key belief that life is perception. We see things not for what they really are, but through a lens of our biases, past experiences, beliefs etc. While we are not responsible for how we initially perceive things, we are responsible for being aware of that perception and how we react to it. The dog will poo, but will we clean up our dog’s poo or leave it there?
Example 1: A colleague comes at you at work with the wrong attitude and you don’t like it. Initially you think “Who the fuck are you to talk to me like that?”. There’s the perception. Now here you have some options. You could (A) blast them for stepping to you wrong. You could (B) ignore them. You could empathise with this person and consider they might have been through some tough shit, which will then either lead you to (C) tolerate their shit or (D) put your foot down calmly yet firmly. What you pick in this situation determines whether or not you’ll grow weeds or flowers in your mind’s garden. If you choose to respond to the disrespect with disrespect (A), you’ve let that person invade your mental sanctity. Your fragile peace has been thrown off by someone you barely know, and now you don’t even feel good. You left the dog shit there simply because it was easier, and now weeds are growing in the garden. Alternatively, ignoring them (B) will keep your peace, but you are permitting them to treat you like that. In other words, you cleaned up the dog shit but your dog will shit there again. Likewise with empathising and tolerating (C). Finally, empathising and then putting your foot down calmly and firmly (D) will keep your peace while letting the person know that you will not tolerate disrespect. In other words, you cleaned up your dog shit and trained your dog not to shit there anymore. You tell it to just hold that right in for the time being, like when you want to fart but you’re a little scared of an extra liquid surprise :)
How you choose to respond to your initial perception and the thoughts you choose to hold are instrumental to your inner peace and quality of life. To some extent, no thought you have is in your control- they sort of just appear out of nowhere. But you can train your mind to have patterns of thinking, such that when you come across certain stimuli, your brain already has an established path of response to suggest to you. As with most patterns, they begin conscious and become automatic over time. Eventually you get to a stage that your disposition is to empathise but put your foot down every time a person disrespects you. Because you’ve chosen to endure picking up your dog’s shit and training it to know better, your garden is lush with beautiful, delicate flowers as opposed thick, weedy vegetation.
Let me explain another way in which cleaning up your dog poo is important. Feeling how you feel. To tolerate a person’s actions is one thing, but to bottle up how you feel about them is another. Often we feel a level of discomfort with something going on, but rather than being outspoken we bottle it up and call it tolerance. For example, a family member comes home from work one day and starts treating you disrespectfully. You don’t like how you’re being talked to, but you think they might have had a hard day and so you leave it. Whilst these incidents are small on their own, accumulation is a very powerful thing. If you don’t express your true feelings to people, they build up and toxicity forms within a relationship. You start treating that family member passive-aggressively because you think that they’re disrespectful. You made snide remarks. You feel justified in your head because this person is disrespectful, but this person is confused because they’re sensing your energy but not understanding why. A prime example of lack of communication in a relationship. But you matter. Your feelings matter. They aren’t logical, but they’re still important. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying you have to voice your feelings in the exact same situation you were disrespected in. Relationships aren’t that black and white. But at some point you have to let them out. Because they always build up. And you’ll eventually implode. Many relationships come to blows in this way, when it could have been avoided via consistent communication and evaluation of one another’s actions.
An extension of my earlier caveat: What I mean when I say you don’t have to respond immediately is this: You can hold your feelings in for the time being, process them, and approach the situation when you and the other person are more calm. If the person is not ready to hear what you have to say, your feelings will likely fall on deaf ears. Whilst it’s definitely not your problem, for both of your benefit you can wait a little while. Being honest about your feelings has nothing to do with how immediately you speak about them.This article is not a hard line of rules and principles that must be followed to their bitter end. That can be a dangerous way to manage relationships. Always use discretion, situational awareness and ultimately empathy for the other person.
It doesn’t have to be voicing feelings about a person to that specific person either.When you’re dealing with interpersonal troubles it has 2 elements: How you deal with the other person in relation to those feelings, and how you deal with those feelings inside of yourself. They don’t have to be the same thing. You could come home from work and talk about something that’s been bothering you there, or an internal battle that’s been stressing you out lately to one of your friends. A journal is a great choice too. Just don’t keep it in. A problem shared is always a problem halved.
After finishing A-Level exams, I got caught in a rut of idleness. I felt purposeless, doubtful and scared. I tried to resolve it in my head but I was too stuck in. I suffered for weeks on end, losing precious time as I refused to speak to anyone about it because I could solve it by myself. Because getting help meant I was too weak to do it on my own. But true strength is realising that you can’t do it all. It’s finding support in those around you. It’s realising that it takes a village to raise a child. One night, I was right about to let my Dad go to bed after another day of refusing to talk to him about how I was feeling. But I sucked it up and asked him if we could talk, because my intuition told me it was the right thing to do. That vulnerability was a necessity. All I did was explain to him my mental troubles for a few minutes, but getting the problem out there made me feel like so much weight had been lifted off of my chest. He didn’t even have to say anything, but it was as if the massive dark figure that I thought the problem was turned out to be a shadow cast by some tiny little thing. The next day I woke up and took care of what I needed to. I stand here today back on my bullshit because of that conversation with my Dad. Two or three minutes changed the landscape of weeks to come. I’m not going to make out like it always works out this perfectly, because it doesn’t, but speaking about my problems has always helped me in a meaningful way.
This is one example in a sea I could give you, because it is from experience that I’ve learnt that you must confide in the people around you with your struggles. Fears, anxieties, worries, annoyances, grievances, the whole lot. Excitements, hopes and gratidude too! Talk to friends, family, therapists, some stranger on a park bench (maybe not that last one). Whoever you feel will listen, or whoever is there, just talk to them. Even a journal. When a mental blockage pops up of toxic thoughts, I always spend some time journaling it, retracing my steps and connecting the toxic thought patterns to events. It feels like untangling headphone wires in your mind, and it helps the inner dialogue have so much less traffic. But even then, I have found that consistent journaling works better, because rather than wait for a pile of dog poo to build up, you clean it up every time your dog poos. That way, you never have to look at too much dog poo at once.
Sometimes the dog has some bad tacos for dinner and there’s just too much for one person to clean up. Sometimes you need the crew to help you solve the problem. And that’s okay. Sometimes we are the pigeon, and sometimes we are the statue. The trick is not to try to be the statue all the time, but rather to learn to embrace your moments as the pigeon. The bad days are part of life, and it will get better. The level of solitude which that mindset brings you will enable you to trudge through some of your hardest times. So remember to clean up your dog poo, and pick what flowers you want to flourish in your garden too. In time, I’m sure they’ll be beautiful.
