No matter where I go, there I am; Small yapping dogs live everywhere. There is comfort in the truth that, “This too shall pass”.

 

There is an often told story that describes perfectly the state of my mind:  

 

      There was once a youth who approached his tribal elder and said, 

       “Grandfather, there are two dogs always fighting in my head: A good and                     friendly dog, and also a dangerous, ugly beast.         

        Which one of these two do you believe will win the fight”? 

 

        The elder replied: “It is simple; The one that you feed the most.”

 

My own head is complicated territory. Like the two dogs in the boy’s story there is a part of me that lives serenely, peacefully, and joyfully, finding it easy to focus on the wise words of the apostle Matthew: “Dwell on what is wise, and just, and of good repute.” There is that other part of me that gets riled up when other people irritate me and then goes into reactive mode, engaging my resentments and leaving me filled with agitation and annoyance.

 

Before I walked The Camino I had reflected on this story often. I have to admit that I had pictured the unpleasant dog in my head as one of the small white terriers that seem to be everywhere near our home in Southern California; When my husband and I see them we laugh and wonder: Why is it always the smallest ones that strain at their leashes and raise such a ruckus?  Like these little guys, a seemingly tiny event can trigger so much "yapping" in my brain that I lose my focus on everything else. I always believed that the lesson for me was that if I simply focused on “feeding the healthy dog," I would eventually become immune to upset;  The yapping, annoying, irritating dog would simply starve to death and leave me alone forever.  The Camino challenged my interpretation.

 

Since I had, in my fantasy, believed I had left both yapping dogs and my challenging relationships, at home I was stunned when I actually encountered both on my “spiritual pilgrimage”. 

 

I have a few “tricky” relationships in my life; Most of us do. Like small yapping dogs they can trigger me at my deepest level when I least expect it. The problem is that when the dynamics of these relationships begin to make even the quietest of rumblings I often don’t just feel my feelings and move on. Instead, my feelings, and the stories they invoke, tend to set up camp in my head and eg on that yapping dog in my brain. Like the terriers back home, these disruptive thoughts are more than willing to wreck all of the peace and serenity I’ve come to enjoy.

 

There was one such relationship that had been causing chattering in my head before I left for Portugal. As I’ve said, I’m a planner so predictably I made a plan: I would engage with the turmoil I was feeling until I boarded our connecting flight in Newark, and then I would wisely refuse to “feed” my irritation any longer. I would starve the bad dog, cross the Atlantic in peace, and begin my pilgrimage centered and serene. 

 

It was a good and worthy intention, however, as the saying goes: “If you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans!”

 

Three days into our walk I learned that things had been “stirred up” back home by one of those “tricky” people in my life. Even though I was thousands of miles away, and didn’t want to engage with the resentment I was feeling, I wasn’t having any luck ignoring it either. My visions of a serene and spiritual pilgrimage threatened to come to an abrupt end.

 

Ironically, or more likely magically, that same day Anne and I found ourselves walking through a tiny peaceful village. We were happily engaging with a herd of goats that had appeared in our path when out of nowhere, we came to backyards that seemed filled with very small, very noisy, very irritating dogs. They seemed so out of place on my spiritual pilgrimage! I looked at Anne and said, “Really? Even now? Even here?” Yes, there they were, just like back home. As the saying goes: “You can run, but you can’t hide!” My reaction was immediate: I did my very best to ignore them hoping they would be quiet and go away. Anne had a different strategy. She began to turn around and offer them the traditional Camino greeting “Thank you! Bon Camino!” It didn’t matter; no matter what we did they were going to yap and bark until they were ready to stop. 

 

Like the ruckus that had begun to be raised in my own head over the events back home, it taught me that irritants often just need to run their course. Sure, I can purposefully “feed them," and they will disturb me longer. I can even change my course and try to avoid them, but the fact remains: Uncomfortable feelings will catch me off guard eventually. It’s just part of engaging in an imperfect world. 

 

Now I know that, unlike my interpretation of the tribal elder’s counsel, I’ll never be able to kill off that reactive, chaotic part of my brain completely. The peaceful part of my psyche may win the fight, but nowhere in the story did the elder imply that the agitating one would disappear forever. As long as I choose to engage life in favor of isolation, there will be literal and figurative yapping dogs to startle me out of serenity. I can do my best to weed out the “tricky” relationships and triggers in my life, but there will always be others that I meet down the road. When I do, I can keep walking and expect that each upsetting encounter will yap away for its allotted time. But, even the loudest, sharpest bark subsides with time. 

 

Reflection:

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The beauty of The Camino was that it offered a tangible lesson that, while I never fully escape all of the elements of life that trigger me, it is not a moral failing to be affected by them either. Now I understand that I will never be "so evolved” that I won't be irritated when irritating things happen! No matter how I choose to respond, either with my deliberate non-engagement, or Anne’s cheery wave, these experiences affect me while they are happening. I learned though, that I should just keep walking; I won’t have to engage with each event forever. I’ve learned that I can count on the fact that no matter how loud the chatter in my head, or in my path, distance and time will always bring relief. 

 

It helps me to remember that my limbic system gets triggered and engaged with a startling or disturbing event for ninety seconds. Any time past that initial, reflexive ninety-second response that I remain “riled up” is because I begin engaging with the experience by telling myself disturbing “stories” about it.

 

      1.  Who, or what, will predictably trigger turmoil in you? 

      2.  How long can you “keep the story going” and keep the turmoil fed?

      3.  What is the price to your peace of mind? What good things in your life get “drowned out” by the ruckus these triggers and stories create?