What One of My Favorite Dogs Taught Me About You, Me, And the Future of Human Civilization
Where Happiness Comes From, Why We’re So Unhappy, And Why It Matters
By umair haque – Nov 12, 2022
This is going to be an essay about you, me, us dogs, the future of human civilization, and happiness. In other words…no pressure.
Where does happiness come from? They draw a distinction between “products” and “experiences” and say that happiness comes from the latter. And this leads to a kind of Netflix culture: “get out there and live life to the fullest!! Take selfies of all those great experiences!!” LOL, do those selfie-people cramming little picturesque Italian villages and pretending to smile seem…happy…to you?
We should care, of course, because the point of civilization is happiness. And it’s true that ours is failing pretty dismally at that. “While happiness increased globally up until 2011, it has been falling ever since.” Happiness is in free-fall, because, of course, well, take a hard look around the globe. It’s a good day when we don’t elect fanatics, which is wonderful and something to celebrate, and yet it’s still a long way from a functioning society. When unhappiness takes over, the result, of course, is the vicious cycle of social collapse — desperate, angry, embittered people become MAGA style fundamentalist lunatics, right down to wishing death on their “enemies,” looking for salvation from the big guy in the sky, or the big dog in politics, or both.
The big dog. In my little dog park, it was a funny old Golden Retriever called Janet. Now, I’m getting ahead of myself, so first, let me tell you a secret. Happiness? It doesn’t come from “products” or “experiences.” This is a consumerist way of thinking, and it’s just leads us in spirals of folly. Happiness doesn’t come from this consumerist dichotomy. It’s hidden in plain sight: it comes from relationships.
I’ll qualify that shortly, but first…well, there I was. Sitting on sofa. “Snowy! Let’s go, buddy!.” He wagged his tail, the little cotton puff, and did what he does whenever we’re about to go for a walk. He ran and hid under the dining table, and yipped at me in delight. LOL. I groaned. Snowy, come on. I can’t get you under there! Dad! Ha-ha! That’s the point.
He was still grinning up at me when my phone buzzed. I glanced at it, irritated. Not many people have my number, precisely because I like my solitude. It was one of my neighbors. I frowned. They don’t usually get in touch unless…I reached down, and swiped, so I could read the message.
And then, my friends, I found myself crying like a baby. The message was from Janet’s two moms. Janet had sadly died, suddenly. She’d eaten something wrong — and they were devastated. So was I. I composed myself, and then sent them back a message saying how upset I was, too. I grabbed Snowy, blew my nose, and…as we rounded the corner…there was another neighbor, usually bubbly. I took one look at Cammie, and started crying all over again. Did you hear about Janet, I said? She grabbed me and gave me a hug.
How sad. How ridiculous. How strange. Here I am, a grown-ass man, as we say these days, a little vulgarly…crying about a dog in the park.
We walked into the park, and Snowy ran to meet his friends. And I thought abut what had just happened. You see, I had no idea — none — that I was so attached to…Janet. I looked at the little doggies, and realized something funny, and strange, and a little heartbreaking. I loved all these little guys, who were grinning and yipping in dizzy circles.
Now, this might sound, like I said, ridiculous, so let me make it even more ridiculous. I was surprised by this little epiphany. You see, I’d never thought it about it this way until Janet was gone. I loved all these little guys. What…where did that come from? What did it even mean? Could you even really…say that? Do that? Be that? Love all the little guys in your neighborhood? But why else had I blubbered like a little baby? It wasn’t something I was making up. I felt Janet’s loss acutely, profoundly.
When we’d met, Snowy — the cliched example of a little white dog — would run up to Janet, and bark at her. Small Dog Syndrome. It was hilarious. Cute. Absurd. He was a few months old, a tiny thing. And she? She was an old Golden Retriever. She’d look at him, the way an old woman might look at a little punk, and Snowy would suddenly go quiet. We’d all laugh.
And I wondered. There was something special about Janet. I felt this weird…can I say it?…kind of connection with her. I’m not kidding, and I remember that when I used to think that, my rational mind, my city-slicker, cold intellectual side would remonstrate me: how ridiculous. But I’d look into her eyes, and see…something. Something true. Some kind of nobility and wonder and grace. She had a big, deep, old soul. I could see it. And so one day, I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“Why is Janet so…so…” I just stammered. I couldn’t put into words. Her two moms laughed. They got it instantly. They told me that they’d adopted Janet after she’d retired as a guide dog. “Ahhhhh,” I said, thinking I got it. I got a little bit of it, but I hadn’t gotten it at all yet. What was it I saw in her eyes? It was something that I could relate to intimately, from my core, and yet, maddeningly, I couldn’t put it into words. Something about guide dogs and people and relationships and love and truth. Lost for words, I reached down, ruffled her head, and did my new favorite thing: gave her proper big dog smackos.
Snowy leaped up in jealousy, and everyone tittered.
Janet quickly became one of my…look, I should say “favorite dogs,” but that isn’t true. Now I know — after she’s gone — that they’re all my favorite dogs. She became something that we don’t say but we should say, so I will, because it’s true.
She became my friend. I’d look forward to seeing her. And that’s strange, you know? Because it’s not like a human friend. We wouldn’t talk and converse and so on. And as the days rolled on, and I’d see her and give her big old smackos, and she’d come say hi, I understood that some things are beyond words. We were friends. We spoke the same language in some truer way than the rudiments of human speech. And what does it really convey, anyways? Here I am, struggling to put it all into words, this strange story of a man and a dog that wasn’t even his.
I stood there in the park, watching the dogs play. Reflecting on the fact that I loved all these little guys. And it suddenly struck me why I had this strange, ineffable soul connection with Janet. She was a guide dog. And what the hell am I? I’m kind of a guide dog, too. Here I am, giving my warning barks, to this society, or that one. No — not that way. This way. There’s danger over there. Let’s walk this way. I think that in her eyes there was that same strange mixture of emotions I feel — weariness, satisfaction, duty, care. You do it because it’s the right thing to do. And I’d bet that guide dogs, too, come to a truer picture of us than we’re capable of ourselves. They see human fallibility and fragility acutely, don’t they? Now it made perfect sense to me why we’d never had to say a word, and we stood beside one another like the oldest of friends.
Isn’t that strange? Funny? It broke my heart to think all that, because suddenly, I realized, she was gone. I wouldn’t see this noble old lady again, who’d become one of my good friends. A light of consciousness had gone dark. I hoped she’d gone to Doggy Heaven. Wherever she was, she was back at the source, in the arms of truth. I felt a kind of a endless grief, and it only began to recede when I looked at all those little doggies again.
All the days I’d stood there. Long summer evenings. Cold winter twilights. Reaching down and giving Janet big old smackos. We didn’t need to say a thing. I knew she understood what I understood. Human fallibility, duty, care, truth, friendship, love. She’d look up at me with those big eyes and I knew she understood all that in a way that I did, that little Snowy didn’t, quite yet. For him, humans were still super-people, rather than fallible, limited, frail things.
Now. Why am I telling you all this, as ridiculous as it all is?
Because as I stood there, looking at the little doggies, in the end, I was struck by this one thought. Happiness comes from relationships, Not products, and not experiences. My life is indescribably richer because, well, I love all these dogs. They’re all special and funny and wondrous in their own ways. They each have their own personalities and proclivities. They’re their own people. My life, let me say it again, is indescribably richer because I know them.
I never expected to say that. You know me by now if you read regularly. I was raised to be this ice-cold intellectual. I’m the cliche of a city slicker, living a super modern life in an old neighborhood in a bustling city. And in this way of life, there’s nothing lower, really, than animals. We city slickers are the polar opposite, even, of my Republican father in law, the old farmer. He’s the one who turned me into a dog person, the crafty old goat, seeing that I needed an intervention, and arranged for a dog to “come over” while I was helping him recuperate from an operation. Game over. I was done. I never — ever — expected to say something in my life like, hey, guys, look at me, woo woo, I love all the dogs. LOL, are you kidding?
But I do. And it’s different, now. Everything. Because of that. I used to think of my neighborhood as a matrix of people and stuff. Stuff flowing in, people buying it, making it, stuff flowing out. The way modern minds think of the world is like that. It’s about people and stuff. Now I see my neighborhood in a much, much more complex and subtle way than that. And a truer one.
As a matrix of life. I walk down the little ancient cobblestoned street. Hey — that’s where Lucky lives, where big old Charlie lives, where Milo lives. I’m not talking about people. Snowy trots besides me, sniffing. I wonder how my buddies are doing. I note the little cat sleeping atop the pillar on the gate of the hold house and say hi. I recognize the trees. And I even say hi to the little fox who pops out from in between the cars, darting in and out of the shadows. I know them all now. This is where I live. In a place full of life. Life I’d never even noticed before.
And what’s my place in it? I’m just a guy walking down this road for an instant. Breathe in, breathe out, gone. It’s all over. So it is. A hundred dogs, a thousand dogs, a million people, have walked this road before me. And yet here I am, today, with my friends, walking it, too.
Happiness comes from relationships. I am a much, much happier person now than I’ve ever been. I wonder if it shows in my writing. I failed at human relationships — not in the way you think, at “having a girlfriend” or what have you. I just found humans…strange. I didn’t really relate to them. They seemed to me to be herd beings, easily prodded into displays of rage and cruelty, and I always felt deeply uncomfortable with that. I kept my distance from most people. The price, of course, was isolation and alienation.
But today, I have this incredible wealth of relationships. I know all these people. Dog, fox, cat, and human. It’s through the dogs that I’ve gotten to know my neighbors, and through the dogs, really, and only, that I understand them. And the dogs, to me? I still feel closer to them than I do to most people. Shrug. I used to think that was a bad thing. Today? I think it’s a good thing.
Why? Because, well, my friends, our civilization is not doing well, is it? It’s locked into a vicious cycle of unhappiness, which is at the root of the way it’s collapsing, really. Our civilization’s foundational premise is that having stuff is going to make you happy — whether products or experiences. It’s all false. You can substitute the luxury vacation for a designer wardrobe, but neither of them are going to make you happy. And yet our entire civilization is premised on this idea — and the sad fact is that it’s failing because of it. Because of this way of thinking, 80% of the world, and entire planet, are effectively put to work to feed the desires of the rich 20% in the West.
But even among that rich 20%, who feels “rich” anymore? Apart from the Creep Who Bought Twitter, not many people, precisely because this form of civilization isn’t working. It’s left all of us impoverished. Much of the world is still impoverished financially, and even the rich parts of are impoverished socially, emotionally, spiritually, turning on each other, in great spasming waves of fascism.
Let me qualify that, because I said I would. Sure, having enough money and security and housing and food is important. We all need those things. But don’t confuse any of that with happiness. They allay existential anxieties and concerns and ward off very real pain, from hunger to fear. But happiness? It’s way, way past just “the absence of pain.”
So what is it? It’s relationships, stupid. Because as we relate, love pours through us, into us, between us. We’re touching the eternal in that moment, because this is what there is, and always was, existence knowing itself, if you want to put it metaphysically — but you don’t have to. It’s eternal because in those moments life is knowing life, celebrating itself, understanding itself. This is outside time. Time stops existing in these moments, and all there is is the feeling of seeing and being seen, understanding and being understood. The truth of us is pouring out of us, and into another. The source is returning home. The circle of existence completes itself. Happiness.
As we think about the future of civilization, we’d do well to reorient ourselves — and reinvent everything — around this truest of truths. Happiness comes from relationships. The highest forms of it, in the most seemingly mundane ways. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, in my life — apart from my family — that has come close to the levels of happiness I feel from knowing all the dogs in my neighborhood, seeing them, playing with them. Nothing. Not fame, money, books, traveling, none of it. If you think it’s just me, go ahead and think about the late Queen and her Corgis.
Happiness is relationships, and even in a neighborhood — something as small as limited as that — there is an abundance of it, more than we can ever “have,” way more than we ever need. Isn’t that remarkable?
But would we know? If we’re glued to our phones, bickering with one another, coveting the latest stuff, or even more fans and followers and whatnot, and not forming those relationships, with this matrix of life all around us?
If we want happiness, then we are going to have to relate to life in a very different — and much more active — way. Oh God, kill me. I know, I know, that sounds awful. Cheesy. Ridiculous. Trite, cliched, hackneyed, throw it all at me. But I mean it, because I’ve lived it. And so have you. Go ahead and think about all I’ve said. Isn’t it true? Doesn’t happiness come from relationships — even ones as seemingly trivial as a dog you barely know? Even nonhuman ones? So as we think about the future, we have to really learn that lesson. Do you really want to end up like all those miserable people you see everywhere around you? Why aren’t they happy, anyways? It’s because relationships — in this deep sense, with life, this grand matrix of existence which surrounds us — are mostly nonexistent for them. And even their human relationships are often barely that — instrumental.
Happiness comes from relationships. The point of civilization is happiness. Put those two things together, and where do you end up? In genuinely — to me, at least — profound places. What kind of economy do you end up with? One in which care is more valuable than stuff. One in which life — of every form — is worth the most, and billionaires don’t exist while we’re amidst deep history’s sixth mass extinction. What kind of society do you end up with? One in which people can actually have relationships not just with each other, but with life, all of it, because now our job as a species is being something like shepherds and caretakers and protectors and nurturers of it. What kind of culture do you end up with? Not dumb superhero movies into oblivion — but ones in which we get to know and celebrate all these relationships we could and should be having with all these wondrous creatures and beings, all of whom are little miracles. You see? Everything changes.
This is where we need to go, I feel, if we’re to survive as a civilization. This is our only way out. We relate. We discover, better, the truth of who we really are. You know? We think of ourselves as so superior, as supreme. We’re just walking apes, my friends. And we’d do well to see the same pain and grief and fear in the eyes of all creation. Because when we do that? Right in that moment? That’s the moment that love is born. And that’s the instant we touch the eternal, too.
I will always remember Janet. Because she taught me all this. I mean that. I think about all this stuff. But it took a dog to really teach it to me. Happiness comes from relationships, and those relationships can be the most improbable ones of all. Between a man and a dog that isn’t even his. Even two people like that can bond right deep down in the soul, because they share something that can’t be broken. Because they know fragility and frailty, and they’re trying to walk the rest of us in this direction, while we want to go that way. Wearily, amused, we know. Patience, patience. This is how it works to be a guide.
I felt it, but I didn’t know it. Those moments in the park were happiness. Exquisite and true and powerful. My buddy! Here, let’s have some big old hugs. How are you doing today? It’s OK — I can see it in your eyes, without you saying a word. How strange it is that I feel so much better that you’re here. I know you you know me. I see you see me. We’re friends. I smile. You grin. Happiness.
Go ahead and imagine a civilization like that. Really. I mean it. Not one where we’re forced to do bullshit work for idiot billionaires so they get richer, and we all know we’re wasting our goddamned lives on this nonsense. But one in which your job, is I don’t know, making friends with this kind of being, and their job is taking care of that one, and her life’s work is tending to that one, and his life’s work is understanding that one. Imagine a civilization which is a matrix of relationships between life — all lives — that’s not based on exploitation, consumption, ownership, but on freedom, rights, self-determination, dignity, respect.
Think about how much happier that one is. And then think about how it doesn’t end up like we are — imploding into a ball of rage and hate, while we boil the planet alive, and still it isn’t enough.
Maybe you see what I mean. I want to say thank you to my friend Janet for teaching me all this. With those patient, noble, knowing old eyes. Some days, I think she was waiting for me to get it already. Hey, you big dumb ape. I know, you guys think you’re so smart. Hold on. Me? I’ve been guiding you places you needed to go my whole life. I know you better than you know yourself. Let me teach you a thing or two.
For the last few nights, on our midnight walk, something strange’s been happening. We round the corner to the stretch where Janet’s house is. And on this stretch, Snowy slows, sniffs everywhere, keeps looking back, and comes to a standstill. Finally, he looks up at me. I haven’t been able to figure it out. And tonight it hit me like a thunderbolt. He’s looking for his friend, Janet. Dad, where is she? I don’t smell her anymore. I can’t feel her. Where did she go? So tonight, I leaned over, and gently patted him on the head. She’s gone, buddy. But she’ll always be right here, with us, in the park, forever.