RULE 46

Check on the guinea pig in the basement.

This is another way of saying you should pay attention to the people and things around you. And this one is kind of personal. When I was younger, I had a guinea pig named Chester Pygge. I really wanted a dog, but I lived in a duplex that didn’t allow them, and besides we didn’t have the room. (I now have a house and two dogs.) In my search for a dog-substitute, I tried large turtles (they died), a parrot (who defecated all over the walls), and Chester.

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I bought Chester a cage, filled it with nice-smelling wood chips, and even cut up a small cardboard box to serve as his pig house. He liked to sleep in the box, and I cut a door so that he could look out, which he seemed to like to do when he wasn’t chewing the cardboard to pieces. (The chewing caused the house to fall down on him about every three or four days.) I regularly fed him his diet of pig pellets, which seemed bland, but which apparently went well with cardboard, and I made sure he had more-or-less-fresh water. Cleaning out the cage was another matter, and here we get to the part of the story I’m not really proud of.

After a few days, the wood shavings in Chester’s cage would get extremely nasty, and I really hated having to clean them out. What made it worse was that I discovered that I was allergic to guinea pigs, so even a few minutes in the same room would bring on a sneezing jag and burning eyes. So I visited Chester less and less, and only when I had to, which was usually to feed him and give him a new box house. At that point in my life, I hadn’t gotten used to changing diapers and barely cleaned up my own room, so cleaning Chester’s cage was an ordeal I avoided as long as I could, even though I knew that it was my responsibility and that he was counting on me. As bad as the mess was for me, Chester actually had to live in it. Given their usual jobs, guinea pigs are used to putting up with a lot, especially from scientists and medical researchers. But even so, there are limits for even the most tolerant pig.

Chester lived to what I suppose was a ripe old age for pigs, but for years I had the same dream: I would suddenly realize that I had forgotten that I had a guinea pig in the basement. I had been going on with my life—going to work, watching television, going to ballgames—and had forgotten to go down to the basement for weeks. All that time, he was sitting there, without food, without water, in increasingly squalid conditions. And I had simply forgotten that he was down there all that time, day after day, week after week. In the dream, I was horrified and would rush down, but it was usually too late.

Of course, it was a guilt dream, and I had it coming.

But I think that dream—and it lasted for years—had a larger message. It wasn’t just the guinea pig in the basement I had forgotten about. In my absorption in my career, my life, there were a lot of things I was forgetting and neglecting: parents, friends, children—all of the people who love you, rely on you, count on you, even when you are otherwise occupied.

Time passes quickly. You may not think about it now, but time is also passing for others in your life. For your grandmother, alone in a nursing home, who waits for a phone call or a visit; for a friend who may be alone in the hospital; or for a brother or sister just down the hall, lying awake in bed wrestling with a personal problem. Or maybe it’s a parent who is going through a difficult period, losing a job, or being sick, while you hang out at the mall with your friends. They are all growing older, time is passing, even if you have forgotten all about them. You may not realize it yet, but even the smallest gesture will be appreciated, because you matter to other people far more than you really understand right now. You are not the only person who is lonely.

Look around. Whom have you forgotten?

Even if it cuts into your social life, even if it’s inconvenient or hard, check on the guinea pig in the basement.