The Lessons Of Dog Poop
I own that?
The lower we sink, the higher we can look.
They leap. They leap. They wag their whole body, push me with their noses, and try to sit. They are desperate to sit like gentledogs, but have no footing on wood floor. Their otter tails wag so hard, they fall over, wriggle around, get up and push me with their noses again.
The truth is that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me.
- Lance Armstrong
We grow when we overcome adversity. We are resilient. Traumatic experience1 can trigger personal growth, particularly in three areas:
- The development of personal capabilities, capacities and strengths,
- The renewal and development of valued relationships, and
- The shift in priorities towards the present and towards other people.
When I reviewed this catalog, I looked for these areas of growth to highlight three qualities of ▲▼▲,2 - perspective, ownership and agency. I couldn’t find ownership. I guess I lost it.
Damasio identifies perspective, ownership and agency as the gifts of the mind. His concept of ‘ownership’ is different from the colloquial “own it,” or “I own it,” which means “take responsibility,” or “I take responsibility.” In this context, ownership is about blame. It assigns roles such as aggressor and victim.
Damasio wrote three sentences on ‘ownership’ in a four-hundred page book.3 If his concept of ‘ownership’ is underdeveloped, mine then is impoverished. At least until my dogs came along...
Sometimes, just a couple of times really, when I walk Cheese and Eli, my large black labs, they take a dump at an inconvenient time. How awful the poop! I’m talking with someone, or don’t have a dog-baggie, or maybe I’m enjoying the walk and don’t want to stop.
The dogs pooped. I didn’t. I’m the victim here. Make the dogs clean it up.4
I look around. Look again. Walk away. I pretend the large heap of oozy, smelly dog poop isn’t mine. Let the flies have it.
The minute I walked off, I made myself the victim. I cannot change the circumstances if I’m far away.
This minor, momentary challenge highlights the three gifts of mind. I can have perspective if I stand over the poop. I’m digusted but still helpless. Well, maybe I could kick it.
If I hold the poop, I own the poop. Here is ownership.
With a smelly handful of poop (hopefully in one of those nice, bio-degradable dog-baggies), I stride to the nearest garbage can and throw it out. My disgust (perspective) is gone (ownership and agency).
I can act only on what I own, nothing else. Most of our actions are mental, either as rehearsal for upcoming actions or as reliving old events to practice different actions.
Even if I left the dog’s poop behind, I will relive the abandoned poop each time I walk past. I’ll relive my failed choice over an over. I might leave poop, but I hold the bag.
To mix metaphors, it’s like Neo practicing Kung-Fu in the Matrix simulator. Our mind is the simulator, and we own the images we practice against. Often, we drop a steaming load in our simulator (I pooted)5 then clean up.
It’s better not to leave a mess. If I did, I can simulate the circumstance, clean up, take responsibility and learn a lesson. I’ll feel better.
I don’t own the responsibility, I own the simulator and the image of the abandoned poot. When I learn and change my behavior, I am responsible.
(Clean up, feel better, read Clean Up, Feel Better: Emotional Hygiene Improves Well Being, Some Thoughts. It an essay about picking up emotional poot, i.e healing a trauma-object.)
Picking up my dogs’ poop or healing some minor trauma-object demonstrates ownership. These moments are not, however, transformative experiences like Lance Armstrong’s cancer.
Perspective occurs after transformation. I cannot agent transformation. Could ownership be necessary for transformation?
A powerful, deadly disease confronts you if you have cancer. Your whole life has to accommodate this stark, compelling adversity. You have to prostrate yourself before the painful ordeal of treatment. Even if you survive the cancer, it has the undeniable power to transform your life.6
We don’t own the cancer, we own the image and the simulator. Where does transformation come from?
Resilience people discover and renew themselves with the awe of being alive. Awe transforms...
Every morning, I let Cheese and Eli out of their crate. My big dogs jump straight up. They really want to jump on me but don’t want a hard knee to the gut. The labs leap in the air, head and shoulders rising above my 6-foot-tall body.
They leap. They leap. They wag their whole body, push me with their noses, and try to sit. They are desperate to sit like gentledogs, but have no footing on wood floor. Their otter tails wag so hard, they fall over, wriggle around, get up and push me with their noses again.
They stare into my eyes.
Then I know, I pick up their poop because every morning they show me awe.7
What awesome dogs have I!
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Traumatic experience, first and foremost, is traumatic. It is wounding, scaring and can result in permanent physical and emotional damage.
People are also resilient. They can benefit from trauma. Many scholars seek to understand resilience hoping to improve care and quality of life. Literature on resilience is substantial. ↩
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The gifts of perspective, ownership and agency are found in the primal first sentence - ▲▼▲ - body-as-it-was, object, body-as-it-is.
Perspective occurs on several levels. We can perceive our body - ▲, perceive the object - ▼, and perceive the changes caused by the object to our body - d▲.
Agency is obvious. Consider the sentence: me, poop, holding poop. The presence of poop caused my holding the poop. But I will process this event through my perspective as a consequence sentence: I picked up the poop.
Where is ownership found in ▲▼▲? I own what? I own the image of the event. I remember, recall, relive, reexperience this: ▲▼▲. I can ignore it, defend against it, but in the end, my ownership is of ▲▼▲, my agency is against ▲▼▲.
A strict constructionist would say I cannot have agency against a physical object without first having agency against its mental representation - ▼. We never need to be conscious of any of mental object, but for our brain to function, it must have a representation to process. ↩
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Damasio AR. The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness. New Ed. Vintage; 2000: p183. His discussion of ownership in toto:
Ownership is hidden, as it were, within the sense of perspective, ready to be made clear when the following inference can be made: if these images have the perspective of this body I now feel, then these images are in my body - they are mine.
Personally, I find this explanation too oblique. ↩
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Who is supposed to make the dogs clean up their poop anyway. ↩
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Cheese is a character from Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends who ‘poots.’ Not coincidently, one of my labs is named Cheese. ↩
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Awe transforms. What changes?
Personality remains stable even after severe trauma. For a longer discussion, read Stuck In A Mobile.
We change self-regard. We build our capacity for resilience, acknowledging it as a core skill. We practice resilience against the trauma objects that soil our prosaic, day-to-day life. We need context for this work - our autobiography. ↩
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Keltner D, Haidt J. Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition. 2003;17(2).
I seem to end by citing this study of awe. It’s a truism in counseling that clients inevitably say the most important thing as the session ends and they leave. ↩
Cole Bitting
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