Random Thoughts, Notes, & Incidents

I have a new guru, and I feel much better now. My new spiritual guide is a five-year-old boy named Mason.

This weekend we went down to Bakersfield to visit an old friend who's living there, sharing a house with some family, including her little cousin, Mason, and a dog with obsessive compulsive disorder.

The dog is otherwise very sweet, but her OCD comes out in form of insisting that everybody throw her tennis ball for her to fetch constantly. Not a moment of down time. She just thrusts her face (stuffed with the ball) into your lap over and over, then moves on to the next person, over and over.

We were joking about the dog's obsessive behavior, but Mason didn't mind. He had no problem ignoring the dog's incessant demands. Finally, he explained how he does it. "It's okay," he said unto us. "You don't need to care." Suddenly the dog no longer bothered us.

In the few days since then there have been a few stressful situations, as there always are. And in each of them I just thought to myself, "Mason says, 'It's okay. You don't need to care.'" And then I felt much better.

So now I have a new mantra, and you can use it too. Feeling overwhelmed by something that's beyond your control? Done all you can, but the idiots are still all around you? Just about at the end of your rope?

Then repeat after me:
Mason says, "It's okay. You don't need to care."