Beach walk thoughts

Dogs, suffering, poop, grief, and the nature of reality

Sublime. The world just floats into my brain as I watch the waves spill on the sand. They come in messy and frothy, then thin out into a mirror reflecting the blue sky. The tide is rising, chasing Lulu and me closer to civilization. She doesn’t like getting wet, but she sure likes digging holes in the wet sand and throwing herself in them for a rigorous roll.

I wonder what her experience feels like to her. She always looks happy, but what does happiness feel like from her perspective? Perhaps in her little furry head, the world for “happiness” is a “sand hole.” Or perhaps happiness is not a word. It’s a smell. What does a beach sand hole smell like? How would I know?

How would I know anything? People have been asking themselves this same thing since apparently humans were self-aware enough to wonder about it. Ancient scriptures dug into that hole. Years ago, I dug into ancient scriptures and came out the other end not necessarily enlightened but definitely more informed. Ancient philosophies seem to agree on a few things we can’t dispute and should pay close attention to.

The most fundamental agreement among philosophical thought from India, China, Ancient Greece, and Mexico is that human beings normally experience neither themselves nor reality quite as they actually are, and therefore we misbehave and suffer.

And here we are, doing our best to keep it that way. We rarely question our perceptions. Our best guesses of what reality is come from the sciences. Most of it goes right over our heads, because these days most of us need a calculator to figure out a restaurant tip, let alone understand what chemistry or quantum physics is telling us. It doesn’t stop us from misunderstanding it and arguing over it, though.

While I remember the Deepak Chopras and Oshos out there who confidently misrepresent quantum physics to build a business empire selling people hope of enlightenment and escape from suffering, Lulu poops.