When I am around my dogs - two beagle-mutts, Rudy and Larry - I am more Confucian than Taoist.
I was reminded of this again today when my wife and I took them both for a walk. As we made our way toward the fields by the town dump, she reached down and unleashed Larry.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Oh, I always let them run here."
I knew that. She tells me how she lets them off their leashes and watches them run free. But I cringed. Dogs, to me, have to be kept under a modicum of control. When off the lead, they should respond to commands, they should return when called. Neither Rudy nor Larry does this. They just run and run, hardly heading a whistle or call.
Nonetheless, I gave in and let Rudy go, and he dashed after his dog-brother.
We walked along, the dogs sensing our position and circling around us but very much absorbed in the various sights and smells they were encountering. Up to the big, open fields we went. Larry looked beautiful. He is the younger and thinner and faster of the two, and he runs like the wind, effortlessly, with exhilarating speed. My wife remarked upon his grace. I worried that he would not come back to us when it was time to go.
And that is what happened. We retraced our path and returned to the place where we had unleashed them, near a busy main road back to our house. Rudy, slower and fatter, ambled up beside me and I was easily able to reattach his lead. Larry was quite a different story. He raced by us, not heading our calls, and shot into the backyard of a nearby house. We called, he ran. This went on for about ten solid minutes and all the while I was thinking to myself what a mistake it had been to let him run free. He was setting the agenda, not us - and that is not how a dog should be handled.
I gave up and took Rudy home. Our house was very close and I figured I could return with Rudy's leash and some dog biscuits to lure Larry back. Maybe with the two of us working at it we could corral him. By the time I found my way back, only about five minutes later, my wife was on her way home, Larry excitedly pulling at the now-attached leash.
The whole affair got me to thinking. In most ways, I am the more Taoist of the two of us. My wife has a good dose of Catholic-Christian propriety that infuses her daily activities and interactions. There are, for her, clear standards of right and wrong and we should consistently follow them. All of which is rather Confucian, at least to my mind. I, on the other hand, have somewhat blurrier expectations. I am not as quick to correct our teenage daughter and I am generally slower to outrage or anger. Chuang Tzu often drifts through my mind. Except when it comes to walking the dogs.
She clearly believes that Larry and Rudy should be able to fully express their inner integrity, their Te, which obviously includes running free. And to see Larry zooming along is to see him in his most natural state, finding his place in Tao. Leashes are artificial human creations designed to distort the inherent character of dogs. We try to bend them to our will, shape them according to our preferences - all very un-Way-like, indeed.
But just as her incipient Taoism does not extend much beyond the dog world (perhaps the cat would count, too), my inner Confucian, usually imperceptible, comes storming out when the canines are near. I could offer a Taoist defense: it is "natural" for a person, perhaps especially a guy, to want to control a dog, to bring it under command; it is in keeping with my own integrity (Te). But that doesn't really cut it. The better Taoist stance is my wife's: let the dogs run free. But I just can't do it. I worry that they will bother someone or, worse, run out in front of a car and get killed. I cannot face the possibilities that the loss of control implies.
It is not just the dogs, of course. I am not really as Taoist as I might like to think - though I would never call myself Confucian. Rather, I am just a standard issue human being: jumbled and inconsistent, alternating between a Confucian desire for propriety and a Taoist embrace of freedom.
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