First of all, since this is supposed to be a blog about my dog and it mostly is, I’ll tell you how thankful I am for little Mason.
During these long days of very little contact with other humans except my mother, who is wonderful, and I live with her, but I do miss other people, people outside my living environment, but anyway, I have my loyal, loving little dog, who lives for me and is right behind me everywhere I go. When the weather is nice, and it has been perfectly beautiful this week, he and I take long walks. Sometimes he gets tired and I carry him part of the way, so he’s my ten-pound weight to strengthen my arms.
When I do yard work, I attach his leash to a porch post, from which he can watch me while I pick up pine cones and sticks, prune azaleas (lately) and rake or whatever. He is content to lie in the sun and just enjoy the outdoors. When I judge that he has been out there long enough – he does have a fur coat, after all – I take him back into the house, and continue my work, singing to myself, sometimes praying, especially these days.
Dwelling on Good Things Produces Good Things
I have been thinking about things to be thankful for in my life and in each day because dwelling on the good things in a person’s life makes any of us who does it have more good things to be thankful for, and complaining about everything gives a person more things to complain about. It’s just the way things are; what you think is what you are. It’s a law, just like gravity.
God set it up that way, and if you give it a little thought, you’ll realize that is a wonderful thing. Just think: God has given every person free will, the right to control and direct your own life. Thomas Jefferson knew it, and when he drafted the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1777, it was the first thing he put in there. This document guaranteed freedom of religion for all people, and this included Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus.
The document says basically that Almighty God created the mind free, and that though He is Lord both of body and mind and had the power to force people to do what He wanted them to do, He chose not to, and certainly no one else has that right either.
You understand that I am paraphrasing here; you should read it yourself; it is a beautifully written document. Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson, in spite of his many writings, had only two mentioned on his tombstone, the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.
We All Have Free Will, the Freedom to Choose
If you’ve never thought about the free will that you have, it’s a whole open wide territory. Think about it: You get to decide not only where or if you’ll go to college, what you’ll be, where you’ll live, what kind of house or car to buy, and on and on, but you also get to build your own life. People tell you sometimes that you’re only as happy as you choose to be, that no one else can truly determine whether you’re happy except you, and that is one example of this ability to design and control your own life.
Sometimes, if we’re letting other people decide for us who or what we’ll be or do, we think they’re responsible for it, that they’re “making” us do what we don’t want to do. Well, if it starts happening to us, we can take back the reins and live our lives free.
Okay, I guess I’m getting into a really intense subject, so I’ll go back to where I was originally. In this time of uncertainty in our country, we have choices. We can choose to be happy each day by being thankful for the good things instead of grumpily cataloguing the negatives. If you don’t believe me, try it!
I will continue this next time. I am putting in some happy photos here, of a beautiful blue wildflower field and of Mason, with his Coronavirus hair. He needs a haircut, and I don’t want to mess it up myself, so I’m waiting for an appointment. His photo is happy because every photo of him makes me happy.
Aren’t these wildflowers amazing? I love that though some people call these little purple blooms weeds, they blanket the whole field to produce a beautiful covering. They don’t last long, but right now they seem to be everywhere I look in the countryside where I live.