I always wondered why certain events happened to me in my life. Sometimes the events swooped me up like a hurricane and deposited me dishevelled, not knowing where I was. Other times, they gently dusted me off, patted me on my shoulder and urged me to continue forwards. Now that I am 48, I have begun to take my time with life and not rush to get a thousand and one things done as I did when I was younger. I have the time now to look at things more closely and with more focus. I have come to the conclusion, and with conviction, that there is always a reason why things have happened; it could be positive or negative. I realised that if I took the time to look deeply enough and more mindfully, I could always find a positive reason why and ignore all the negatives.
Today was one of those days when I had to look for a positive reason why. My day started off as any other day. I have routines in the mornings as everyone does. I wake up, freshen up and feed my five pets before I take my two dogs downstairs for a walk and then to run around in our big garage. However, little did I know that, today, one of the garage gates was wide open when I released the beasts to run free. And free they ran while I sat on my olive tree bark performing my Reiki ritual. They ran together for their lives exploring my quiet neighbourhood.
When I stood up to do my walks around the building and check on them, my heart literally dropped when I spotted the steel gates to my dogs' heaven wide open. I quickly grabbed their leashes and ran out the gate not knowing which direction they ventured. If it were not for friendly people who kept asking me if I had lost “one big and one small dog”, I would not have known where to begin the search.
After twenty five minutes of running and people guiding me in the right direction, a taxi driver with a passenger stopped to ask me if I had lost two dogs. I was standing in a panic in the middle of the empty street at 6:40am, twisting around, searching, calling out the name of my little dog, Boo, and holding two leashes. So it was no wonder that they figured out that the loose dogs were mine. They told me that they had spotted them on the main road pavement going uphill. They urged me to jump in the car to take me there. The driver had to reverse to go uphill so that he would not go against traffic. When we spotted them, they looked so content inspecting their surroundings and spreading their scent, but when I opened the door to the taxi and called out their names, they quickly came over as if saying, "Hey, where have you been?"
After I got home and took a shower, I sat contemplating the interesting event. I realized that if my dogs had not run out of that gate, I would not have met, in passing of course, such wonderful helpful people in my city. It was a chance for me to reaffirm the belief that there is a lot of good out there despite this trying time. It was a reason that I needed confirmed every once in a while. From now on, I vow to look at all the events that touch my life with mindfulness, searching for the positive side of things no matter how difficult that would be. Exploring the positive, will definitely improve not only the state of my mental health, but the quality of my life as a whole.
