This pretty, pampered dog is staring at me right now.  He’s peering at me from his princely perch onmy sofa and waiting for me to pet him. Or serve him.  Or whatever it isthat princely dogs expect.

And this dog?  He’stired.  He just wants to sleep.  Willyou people cut out the racket, please?  Hesaid that, he did, I swear.

Wait.  You didn’t knowmy house was a kennel? 

Ah, well.  This week it smells like one, but the truth is that out here in suburbia we are limiting thepack.  These lovely dogs are just visiting for the holidays.

We do have one sweet pup of our own, one year-and-a-half bundle ofenergy and goodness who’s feeling a bit down right now.  Here he is, hiding in his kennel. 

Why the dog reclusiveness, you ask?  No one can be sure, of course.  But I’m going to venture a guess, an I’ve-had-dogs-for-years guess:  He’s pouting.  Look at him.  It’s a classic puppy pout:  the big dog won’t play (too old, too tired) and thelittle dog is allowed on the couch (spoiled pretty-boy).  Nofair.

Life’s tough sometimes, isn’t it?

No problem.  It took some time to think this through, but I have a fairly solid grasp of my strengths and weaknesses so it wasn’t a stressful assignment.  Public speaking: strength.  Getting clothes into the hamper:  weakness.  (Ooh, essay idea, right there!)

When I checked in with my classmates, an absolutely fantastic bunch by the way, here’s what I found:  their strengths were really strong.  Life as an expat with baby-in-tow, and illegal home births (Hello, Kentucky, really?  Illegal?) are just a couple of things this talented group brings to the table.  As I read through their ideas I was excited to get to know these women.

Fast forward one day:  Time to get busy.  I whipped through a query letter and felt good about it.  Solid idea, probable market, all good.  Then I tried to pitch the same idea from a different angle.  Tremendous thud. 

And suddenly, out of left field, the insults came flying.  You’re ideas aren’t good, you’re not good at spinning stories, Listen up, Little Miss I’ve Had a Happy Life: you have a lot less to work with and write about than your friends who’ve been through the ringer.

This astonishing lack of confidence came from within, of course. I was taken aback; lack of confidence is not my modus operandi.  I don’t have time to wallow in that kind of nonsense and so I don’t.  But this time?  This time it snuck in the backdoor, tiptoed around, and smacked me with such a stunning display of uncertainty that I was unnerved.  So brazen!

I was tired the day of the assault, having played Let’s Pretend We’re Still In College the night before with one of my closest friends.  To be fair, we solved most of the world’s problems after midnight so you can rest assured we’ll play again.  But peeling my body out of bed the next morning wasn’t easy.  And after three hours of work and at least as many Diet Pepsis, I was still a little groggy.  When another friend showed up for lunch, I lamented my newfound uncertainty.  With a sage smile my friend replied, “But you’re tired today.  I always doubt myself when I’m tired.”

I’m quite sure I’ve never heard a better argument for getting a good night’s sleep!

The thing about life is this:  there is so much to learn and so much to see that we cannot possibly get to it all. 

Instead, fairly early on, we’re taught to focus.  We learn, slowly at first, that we can’t possibly understand all life has to offer, and we narrow our path.  We decide what interests us and we move in that direction, eventually forgetting about the rest of it, the things outside of our bubble, the life we create.

Sometimes, though, something slides into our peripheral vision; maybe it enters our self-imposed bubble, maybe it doesn’t.  But we recognize it.  We remember, for a time, that there are other things, real things, out there in the world that we don’t spend any time understanding.

Think about it this way:  How many times have you heard about the Theory of Relativity.  A lot of times, right?  And you know that the brilliant Mr. Einstein had something to do with this theory.  But do you understand it?  Do you know how it applies to time and space and our understanding of those things?  Do you remember that it superseded Newton’s idea of time and that part of the theory is that time is not uniform or absolute?  I didn’t remember that at all.

As you must suspect, these are not the sorts of theories I on which I regularly ruminate.  I think about education theories and parenting theories; I think about travel and friendship and family.  I think about words and their roots and how we use them.  I think about life and choices, about women and work, about society and class structure, about race, religion, and whether we will ever see peace on earth.  But time and space?  Not so much.

Still, when these sorts of ideas enter the stratosphere of my incredibly small life, I move towards them.  I like thinking about ideas that are outside the scope of my usual life.  To this end, several years ago, I bought two books by Joy Hakim that fascinate me:

The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way (Smithsonian Books, 2004) and

The Story of Science: Newton at the Center (Smithsonian Books, 2005).

I’ve read and re-read parts of these books a hundred times, and I still find them fascinating.  I love how Ms. Hakim weaves history and science together, taking facts I learned here and there, in different classrooms, and creates a cohesive story.

Still, I’m not a scientist.  I don’t plan to start writing extensively about Copernicus or Galileo.  But I like the idea that I could.  I could study science or write about it.  Or I could choose something else; there’s a whole world of ideas and theories that don’t inhabit my current space.   I like thinking about everything else that’s out there; I like thinking about the lives of the people into whom these ideas fall.  I like to think about how what each of us chooses to focus on impacts first our lives, then the lives of those around us, and finally the world at large in subtle and grand ways that we may never realize. 

Those are the kinds of things I ruminate about.  Ah, summer.