There is one thing we can do, and the happiest people are those who can do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present. We can be all here. We can give all our attention to the opportunity before us.
—Mark Van Doren
Though technically speaking, Murphy was a Christmas puppy, nothing about him was a surprise. For months Ben and Claire had each researched their favorite breeds and then compared notes to narrow their choices. First Leonbergers, next Dogues de Bordeaux, then otterhounds were dropped from the list, till finally they were left with one. Then day trips on the weekends followed—out to the Berkshires, down to the Cape, and up to small towns in Vermont and New Hampshire—visiting different bloodhound breeders, considering parents, looking at pups, being interviewed, then waiting. Everything about Murphy had been thoroughly planned before he was born.
At first they’d intended on getting a puppy the summer before Ben’s third year at Brown. But they opted instead for one last hurrah (before his caseload of patients grew larger and Claire began in earnest on her thesis for her MFA) when Claire’s parents invited the couple to join them on vacation for their anniversary.
“We could get a puppy anytime,” Claire explained as she recalled, “but an offer like that, for two weeks in Maui, was more than anyone could resist.”
Then in September as classes resumed, with the prospect of winter soon looming ahead (not to mention the length of time Ben spent in clinics), they decided to call the breeder again.
“We hadn’t planned on getting him, or any puppy, in time for Christmas, but then the idea … kinda grew on us.” Claire would have three weeks on break, the breeder said the litter was huge (ten puppies could be seen on the X-ray, and possibly another one or two), and they adored both of the parents.
“At first, Claire really liked this one older pup—his name was Mackenzie—that came from the litter just before Murph.”
“Yeah, he was cute,” Claire recalled wistfully and then turned to Ben, “but we wanted a puppy. We both agreed”—she turned back to me—“you know, from the beginning.”
The photos they showed of Murphy when he first came home at ten weeks old were as adorable as I’d expected. Even with his tiny frame amid that ample heap of wrinkles, I could almost see that familiar face of Trusty from Lady and the Tramp. Looking at him two years later, snuggled cozily on the rug, with Claire at one end, Ben at the other, and that ruffled jumble of fur between them, I couldn’t help hearing somewhere back inside my head Trusty asking Lady and Jock, “… As my grandpappy Old Reliable used to say—don’t recollect if I’ve ever mentioned Old Reliable before?”
With Murphy’s head tucked next to Claire’s thigh and one ear draped onto her lap, the folds and furrows around his eyes almost convinced me that he was dozing. But his nose assuredly gave him away, twitching and sniffing on full alert, true to his bloodhound heritage. I tried to imagine what he could be smelling. Perhaps the catnip or treats in my pack, despite the fact that both were almost hermetically sealed in plastic bags. Or maybe a whiff of moon bear or leopard clinging to my clothes since my morning visit to the zoo.
While watching Murphy, I started by asking, “So, when do you think the first episode was? You said in your history you can’t quite remember.”
Claire sighed, then answered, “It’s been such a blur. They just seemed to suddenly start up from nowhere.”
“I’d guess the first one was sometime in April,” Ben offered.
“Really, you think so? That early?” Claire questioned. “I just don’t think it’s been long. I’m pretty sure it was the end of May.”
Three months, I noted, as Claire recalled, “I’ll never forget that first one, though.”
Murphy and Claire were alone in the garden enjoying a bit of the afternoon sun after a day of classes apart and a couple of hours working at home on one of the sculptures for her thesis. Ben, of course, was still in clinics. Kate, their landlord, had just pulled past on the driveway between the main house and the cottage, and the girls, Bree and Emily, had hopped out of the car as soon as Kate had hit the brakes. Both were running toward the cottage—and wishfully out of earshot of Kate—to play with Murphy before their mother called them back to begin their homework. Emily was barely in the lead, laughing and racing ahead of Bree, trying to get to Murphy first.
“Wait a minute. It was definitely May. It was after school and really warm and the girls were still in their uniforms.
“Bree, I think, was waving a stick and calling Murphy to ‘Come and get it’ and keep her sister from reaching him first. And Murphy, I remember, stood next to me, looking back and forth at them. He was so confused which one to go to.”
Claire paused a beat and then continued, “And that’s when the ambulance went past—or maybe police car, I still don’t know which—out on the street in front of the cottage. Whichever it was, the siren was loud (but not really louder than any other) and that’s when Murphy just went … berserk.
“It was just so strange to watch it happen. One minute he’s so happy and excited to see the girls again and the next minute he’s attacking the bench—snapping and growling and snarling at it.”
“And nothing like a siren had ever bothered him before, right?”
“No—never fazed him. And they go by … somewhat often—maybe, once or twice a week.”
Nothing for two years. “Please, go on.”
“Well, I remember jumping up and thinking, ‘What just happened? What’s he attacking?’ I wondered if a bee had just stung him. But he wasn’t really acting hurt. And he’d never, ever acted that way anytime he’d been injured before. It was more like he was furious at something. He was grabbing the slats of the bench in his teeth and biting them so viciously that they were breaking and chunks of wood were literally falling from his mouth.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I really didn’t know what to do. I was pretty sure if I tried to stop him, I would just end up getting hurt. I know I shouted, ‘Stay back!’ to the girls, but they’d stopped cold as soon as it happened—I still feel bad, it must have been scary, even if both of them said they were fine—and they were far enough away that I wasn’t really too worried for them. But still, to play it safe, I slowly slipped around the bench and pulled them back a little farther. And then the three of us just kinda stood there watching him. I know—that sounds pretty stupid, huh?”
“No, not really,” I reassured her and then continued, “So, then what happened?”
“So, after another minute he finally stopped attacking the bench. And then he stood there—he looked exhausted—and panted and drooled and … that’s about it.”
“At what point did Murphy seem like he was himself again to you?”
“Well, for maybe like fifteen seconds, he just looked at the bench and seemed confused. That’s when I began to wonder if maybe he’d had some type of seizure. His eyes seemed kind of glassy and dazed. And then … he turned and noticed us, and he got that Murphy look again. I thought it was over, whatever it was, but worried a little if it’d come back. So I sent the girls to go get Kate, grabbed my phone, and called our vet. We took him to the emergency clinic—Kate and the girls insisted on driving—and they checked him over, ran some tests, and kept him overnight to watch him.”
The tests did not reveal a thing. His blood cell count and chemistry were in line with those for a two-year-old. With Murphy back to his same old self, Dr. Wellesley, their family vet, was at a loss to explain what had happened. The emergency doctor felt the same. So they left their diagnoses open—toxicity, metabolic disease, occult brain lesion, encephalitis, seizure disorder: The list went on. And, of course, they mentioned there was a chance it was some spontaneous form of aggression or another bizarre behavior. But with Murphy apparently back to himself, they opted to simply wait and see if anything happened and, if so, when.
They didn’t wait long—only five days—before another incident. Like the first, it followed a siren, but this time they were on a walk. It was early Sunday morning, Ben was gratefully home from clinics, and the three of them were strolling through the neighborhood to the bakery. An ambulance passed with flashing lights but quietly, with no traffic that early, until it reached the intersection where Hope Street crosses Rochambeau. As soon as the siren began to blare, Ben and Claire saw Murphy jump, hastily scan the sidewalk around him, and frantically scramble across the path straight to the nearest telephone pole. As with the bench, he began to attack it savagely, with no holds barred, claws digging in, teeth bared and gnashing. This time Ben grabbed Murphy’s leash, which Claire had been holding for most of the stroll, and tried to tug him away from the pole, although with close to a hundred pounds of ferocious bloodhound pulling back, Murphy clearly won the contest. Throwing caution to the wind, Claire meanwhile wrapped her arms around him in hopes that she might be able to calm him. Still unfazed by both of them, Murphy kept up his assault on the pole until he finally stopped, exhausted. The second time from start to finish lasted no more than two or three minutes, and after half a minute more, in which he tiredly panted and drooled, Murphy returned to his laid-back self.
Another occurred just two days later, but unlike the others, inside the cottage. Just before bedtime that Tuesday night, Claire was warming a cup of tea to help her relax before going to sleep. Murphy had already made his rounds outside in the garden an hour before and had gone ahead of Claire and Ben to claim his space on the featherbed. Nothing was out of the ordinary. There wasn’t a siren or sound outdoors, at least that Ben or Claire could hear, and inside the cottage was blissfully quiet. Claire often made tea before going to sleep as part of her normal evening routine. But when the microwave finished heating and signaled to Claire that it was done as it always did with a series of beeps, Murphy charged in like a shot from the bedroom and lunged headlong straight at the oven. Although the microwave fared well, the kitchen pantry and Murphy did not. The good news was that it didn’t last long—no more than two minutes of all-out aggression. But in that time, one cabinet door, three pantry shelves, a bowl, and a mug were damaged far beyond repair; Murphy fractured two incisors and scraped his gums till they were bleeding and raw.
After the third fit, when there was no siren, Ben and Claire to their dismay witnessed even more episodes, sometimes triggered by something new—the hair dryer, alarm clock, toaster oven, kitchen timer—as well as the old repeat offenders, but they rarely happened predictably. Most days nothing diverted Murphy from his happy-go-lucky self: Beeps, buzzes, squeaks, and sirens were viewed by Murphy indifferently.
“I really can’t make sense of it,” Ben suggested in med student mode. “A fire truck could roar on by with sirens blaring and Murph’ll do nothing. And then on another day, a beep from my phone will send him into a full-blown fit.”
Ben stood as he said, “Wait. Let me show you,” while signaling for me to stay where I sat. “I’ll be back in just a couple of seconds.” He left us there. I heard a door open. And then, in a moment, Ben was back in the room holding an old wooden crate in his arms. “Here,” he offered, “take a look at these,” as he sat to join us back on the rug.
Inside the crate was a graveyard of victims: chewed-up alarm clocks; a demolished phone; what looked like an old cherished doll dismembered; a mangled iron (alarmingly it had been on at the time that Murphy grabbed it, and yet by some miracle he wasn’t burned); a laptop computer so shattered I shuddered to look at it; a couple of gouged and bent candlesticks; and an assortment of shards from vases and mugs. The extent of the damage was truly impressive.
“And yet, through all of these incidents, neither of you has ever been injured?”
“Nope—never,” Ben replied. “It doesn’t matter what we do. Even when we try to stop him, he just stays focused on whatever he’s attacking.”
“Not even an accidental nip?”
“Well, sure, he’s scratched me a couple of times when I’ve tried to hold him and he pushes away,” Claire answered, “but, otherwise, that’s really it.”
“And do you do that very much?”
“What’s that?” Ben asked.
“Try to hold him?”
“Sure, I’ve tried, but it doesn’t really calm him down.”
“Me too,” Claire added, “though it never helps to comfort him. But I still keep thinking I should be trying, somehow, to help him stop and not just stupidly stand there and watch him.” She paused, then added, “But also, if someone else is around, it’s just … well, to be honest … embarrassing.”
“Oh—I hear you—that doesn’t help. But, no one else has been injured, right?”
“No, thank goodness. We couldn’t live with ourselves.”
“But, you gotta know,” Ben stressed, “he’s never come close to hurting anyone.”
“It’s like he avoids everyone that’s near,” Claire said, “except, of course, when we wrap ourselves around him. Even then, he pushes us away.”
What are the odds? I wondered.
“Okay. Let’s set aside, for a moment, the garden or out in the neighborhood. What do you do, if anything, when he has a fit right here at home? I mean, just looking in this crate, a laptop computer … the clocks … a phone? These things cost money, and you guys are students.”
“Tell me about it,” Ben mumbled. And then, more clearly, “But, it’s not about the money. Claire and I both love this dog.”
“He’s like our kid. You understand.” With a knowing glance, we read each other’s eyes.
“So, we just grin and bear it,” Ben explained with a wrinkled smile.
Claire cleared her throat and stroked Murphy’s ears. “We’ve tried a few times to slip a toy in front of him—his fluffy monkey, which he totally adores; his squeaky bunny; a bone; a ball—so at least he’s attacking something of his own, but nothing’s ever really worked.”
“And a couple of times we nudged him to the bathroom, once with a broomstick and the other with a folding chair,” Ben offered. “I wanted to see what he’d do in the dark—if he’d get calm more quickly, or what.” Then he sighed. “But that was a total disaster.”
Both of them grinned.
“Oh, yeah,” Claire added. “It was really bad. You wouldn’t even believe the bathroom—shower curtain, cabinet doors, makeup, shampoo, bath salts. We won’t be doing that again.”
“I can only imagine,” I replied. Claire’s eyes met mine and her smile was contagious.
“I thought of taking pictures while Ben was cleaning up, but, well …”
I turned to flip through Murphy’s medical records, to remind myself of all they had done in follow-up with Dr. Wellesley.
“And, of course, he’s been worked up completely,” I thought out loud as I scanned the reports. “Chemistries, UAs, CBCs, liver function and thyroid profiles, fasting blood glucose, a tox screen for lead, and a neuro consult with Dr. Danes.” Then, looking back up to Ben and Claire, I said, “It looks like he put Murphy on potassium bromide and phenobarb, but not very long. Just a few weeks?”
“Yeah, all they did was make him dopey,” Claire said. “The episodes didn’t really change.”
“He said he couldn’t rule ’em out,” Ben added, “but, he just didn’t think we were dealing with seizures. So both vets said to come see you.”
I’d seen the pattern from time to time but never in that particular breed, although that didn’t really surprise me; since bloodhounds were uncommon in New England, I rarely saw one for any reason. But, of those dogs with similar signs, no two cases were quite the same. Each patient had their nuances: what sounds would trigger an episode, how they looked when they were aroused, where they directed their aggression, how long it took to calm back down, and what their families did with them during the fits and in between. For though in some respects their histories might seem similar, what caused the episodes varied from case to case.
We try so hard to piece together what science reveals about the brain to better understand our patients—even more so with animals, who don’t use words to explain their thoughts and feelings. Yet, in spite of all we understand from modern advances in medicine, much of what we see and treat still remains a mystery. Although two patients may seem much alike—one lunging from sirens, another from thunder, and both attacking whatever’s nearby—what goes on inside their brains may differ and, likewise, so will how we care for them. Often what seems like a single disease is, in fact, a complex syndrome of different problems that look the same. So, in caring for our patients, we must be mindful of all we can learn from them, before their treatment and afterward. Practicing medicine becomes an art when we interweave what our patients can teach us with science, research, and our own experience, balancing knowledge with intuition.
With all this circling in my thoughts, I put a name to what Murphy faced: canine idiopathic aggression (a fancy way of saying that we weren’t quite sure what caused his fits). For some dogs, such as Murphy, certain sounds may cause them pain for reasons that aren’t really clear—perhaps their nerves or receptors for hearing acquire a sensitivity, although I’ve seen other patients where touches or smells can do the same. Some may have complex partial seizures of the temporal lobe or elsewhere in the brain, which can be hard to diagnose without recording an EEG during an actual episode. (Imagine a dog at the height of his aggression, electrodes connected to his head, with wires torn and flung in all directions.) For other dogs, whatever the trigger, their neurons may fire in a roundabout way through the brain’s key emotional centers, provoking sometimes violent reactions to seemingly trivial stimuli. Still others may be driven by an all-consuming fear or panic with an overwhelming need to aggressively defend themselves.
Mulling over Murphy’s case and considering what I’d seen and learned of him, my instincts knew which way to go. So as we sat and formed a plan, I listened to my intuition. “Weighing it all, in my opinion, these sounds are making Murphy very anxious, and that’s provoking these fits of aggression.”
“But I guess I don’t really get it. Why would sounds like that make him anxious—and then only sometimes?” Claire asked while trying to sort it out.
“Well, I can give you all sorts of theories, but all I’d really be doing is guessing. And not knowing which is true, they don’t really change what we should do. Trying to pinpoint what first happened that led our dog to develop a problem can sometimes be a booby prize. As much as we try to figure it out, we often end up at the very same question that the three of us face right now: ‘So, where do we go from here?’ ”
In implementing a plan for Murphy, I began with practical management—ensuring Murphy’s and everyone’s safety, addressing sounds around the house, assessing when and where to take walks, and reinforcing his behavior at times when he was calm in the face of sounds that sometimes upset him. We added antianxiety meds based on my experience of seeing how essential they were in helping dogs with similar fits. And although the meds took a bit of tweaking, from sertraline to citalopram, and tuning the dosage so it was just right, within five to six months Murphy’s signs had disappeared. He wasn’t numb, dopey, sleepy, or less affectionate with Claire and Ben. To them, he seemed just the opposite—inquisitive, loving, playful, energetic—and they came to realize the toll his anxiety took in other ways well beyond the aggressive fits.
“I never realized how stressed he was, even before the episodes,” Claire said one day in follow-up. “He never seemed anxious to either of us, when he was aggressive or otherwise. We thought he was just a quiet dog—of course, except for those wild fits. But, to see him now, he’s just so much happier and … full of life. He’s even tighter with Emily and Bree; as soon as they’re home and he hears their voices, he’s off like a shot to play with them. And you should see him in the neighborhood, sniffing around like he never did. It’s hard to imagine he’s the same dog that used to go crazy from all those sounds.”
It’s been five years since I last saw Murphy. Once Ben finished his internship and Claire completed her master’s degree, they moved from Rhode Island to California for Ben to perform his residency, and then they settled in Laguna Beach. Through the years as we’ve kept in touch, Murphy’s had a couple of bumps: just as they finished the drive out west and again before the baby was born. For both, the fits were mild and brief—only with sirens and quickly soothed, though he was a bit anxious in between. But the stretches were only for a couple of weeks and then he returned to his easygoing self. Though Murphy now is nine years old, he’s as playful with their daughter, Nell, as he was with Bree and Emily. And while he’s slowed a touch with age, he still enjoys his walks in the neighborhood and, most of all, along the shore, where he loves to sniff through the tidal pools and splash with Nell between the waves.
What’s brought me back to think of Murphy so many times through all these years is not in the details of his case or even my fondness for him, Ben, and Claire. What touches me so deeply and keeps him so often in my thoughts is an image of him in the worst of his episodes. In those first few months as I worked with Murphy and we struggled with how best to care for him, I witnessed several aggressive fits, both out on the street and inside the cottage. Fraught with sudden anxiety that could be triggered at any time and compelled to cope as best he could, Murphy consistently turned away from people, particularly Ben and Claire, to focus on objects instead of them. Even when Ben and Claire interfered and could have been bitten, if only by accident, not once was either one of them injured. This wasn’t just luck or coincidence but rather, I am certain, by Murphy’s intention. In the height of his aggressive fits, he kept enough presence of body and mind to always ensure the safety of others. This is the image that stays with me still.
Presence is a state of being in which we focus our attention in the moment. It challenges us to accept what is happening as if we have chosen it intentionally. Even when we feel compelled or justified to resist what we’re facing, being present involves working with circumstances instead of against them, or forgoing them. When we’re fully present, we embrace each moment for all that it offers and then act accordingly.
In the story of “Three Questions,” Leo Tolstoy tells the tale of a king who wondered how he could best rule his kingdom. In doing so, he asked three questions: When is the right time to begin? Whom should he listen to and whom should he avoid, especially when facing critical decisions? And, at any given moment, what is the most important thing to do? The king knew if he answered these, his kingdom would prosper as long as he ruled.
For months he pondered and brooded and struggled till, at last, the king sent out a decree that he would bestow a great reward to anyone throughout the land who could teach him the answers to these questions. So, wise men came from near and far, seeking audience with the king to offer him what he desired, but each one answered differently.
As they responded to the first question, “When is the right time to begin?” some advised he draft a schedule, planning his life ahead by years and, once completed, must live by it. Others proclaimed that this was absurd—that no one could plan for every deed; instead, they told him to stay alert, hour by hour, minute by minute, setting aside all other distractions, and then do what each moment required. A few declared no single man could know the best time to begin and suggested the king assemble a cabinet of wise men to tell him when he should act. Still others insisted that such a council would only muddy the waters and make his decisions more difficult. They claimed the king should consult a magician to learn beforehand what best to do.
Their answers to the second question varied as much as with the first. Some told him he must trust his legal advisers. Several suggested that doctors knew best. Many thought priests and ministers were wisest, while others argued a king should trust his warriors above everyone else.
As for the question of what to do, a few reminded the king that he could always depend on his skills at warfare. Some professed science was the highest pursuit. And others avowed religious worship.
With the scholars giving such different answers, the king felt he could agree with none and sent them away without reward.
Now more unsettled from all he had heard, the king set out with his bodyguard on a quest to find the answers himself. One day while the two men wandered through a village, the townsfolk told the king about a monk who lived deep in the woods and was highly revered for the wisdom he offered. And still not having found the answer to his questions, the king set out in search of this holy man. He traveled for days to the edge of the kingdom, through lonely valleys and rolling hills, till he reached the forest where the recluse lived. Then, leaving his horse and escort behind to wait for him by the trail-side, he changed from his gowns into commoner’s clothes, and set off on the path through the forest alone.
The trail climbed quickly and steeply upward, with snow-clad peaks towering overhead, till at last it led to a simple hut in a narrow clearing—really no more than a gap in the forest—not far below the first mountain crest. Just across that small, rock-strewn meadow, the king found the holy man, shovel in hand, outside his cottage tilling a garden. He was frail and older than the king had supposed, and with each strike of the monk’s spade to the ground, the king could hear his straining breath.
Pausing a moment as the king approached, the old man looked up to say, “Hello,” and then bent down to continue his work.
The king replied, “Greetings,” as he came closer, then began telling his story while the monk tilled the earth—the journey he’d been on, why he had come, and the questions he’d struggled for so long to answer.
Leaning his body now and then on his shovel, the old man listened thoughtfully, furrowed his brow with concentration, and nodded from time to time, but, once the king finished, he went back to his digging without as much as a single word.
Concerned that he might just have overwhelmed the hermit, or that perhaps the old man was too tired to talk, the king offered: “Excuse me. If you’re willing, could I help you? I can work in the garden while you rest awhile.”
With a good-hearted smile, the monk replied, “Thank you,” as he reached out and passed the shovel to the king. And turning, he walked to some steps outside the cottage, dipped an old cup in a bucket of water, and wiped his brow with a towel that lay next to it. Then he sat down to rest and watch.
The monk sat in silence and the king toiled without a word, trusting his questions would be answered in due time. But, after digging two full beds, from one end of the plot to the other, he paused and called out to the monk, “I was wondering, now that you’ve rested a bit, if you had thought about the answers to my questions.”
The old man looked back with that smile once again as he seemed to consider the king’s question for a bit. Then he stood and returned to the king’s side in the garden.
“Now it is your turn to rest and let me do my work again.”
The king, though, refused to return the spade. Instead, he simply resumed his digging. After several moments more, the old man turned and walked out of the garden, back to his post on the steps once again.
An hour passed, and then another, and still the king continued to dig until the sun slipped below the treetops and steeped the sky with vermillion hues. At last the king stuck the spade to the ground, looked back to where the holy man sat, and crossed through the rows of freshly tilled earth to him.
“As much as I’ve been willing to help, I came here today in search of answers. Yet, in spite of my work, I’m no more the wiser. If you can offer me no advice, then perhaps it is time I resume my journey.”
“Wait! Look behind you,” the hermit interrupted. “Here comes someone running.” And then he suggested, “Let us see who it is.”
The king turned around and saw a stranger, a bearded man, running toward them from the woods. Even from a distance, he could see the man was wounded. He held his arms against his sides and clenched his belly with his hands; yet, blood had clearly seeped from beneath and soaked his shirt a dark crimson. Just as the injured man reached the king, he stumbled to the ground and fainted.
Both the king and hermit rushed to his side, while the stranger lay there in a stupor moaning. Working together to loosen his clothes, they quickly found the wellspring of his blood—a deep gash in his abdomen. Quickly with a handkerchief and then a towel the old man gave him, the king plugged the wound as best he could, but the blood did not stop seeping through. Again and again he removed the towel, wrung the blood out with his hands, and pressed it back onto the wound until the bleeding finally stopped. Then, with a fresh towel the monk had brought, the king wrapped the wounded man’s belly once more.
It wasn’t long before the man awoke—though not quite lucid in his thoughts—and between incomprehensible words, begged for a sip of water. Silently the monk arose, walked through the garden to a nearby well, and returned with a fresh bucket of water, which the king then offered in sips to the stranger.
The sun had set and the air was getting colder, so the king and the monk lifted the wounded man and, with him cradled in their arms, carried him to the old monk’s bed. Weakly thanking both of them, the man closed his eyes and rested quietly. Tucked underneath a woolen blanket and nestled in the warmth of the hut, the man woke just enough to thank them both, and then dropped back into a fitful sleep.
The king, exhausted from his journey and all his work since he’d arrived, sat down at last in the threshold to the hut. Gazing across the long rows in the garden and on past the meadow at the darkening skies, the king soon drifted off in the doorway and slept on the floor there all through the night.
When the king awoke the following morning, he wasn’t sure at first where he was. Then, as his memory came back to him, he turned his gaze to the wounded stranger. The bearded man lay awake on the bed, studying him with a smile on his face.
In a weak voice, the man begged softly, “Please, forgive me,” to the king.
“But, I don’t know you,” the king replied, “and have nothing to forgive you for.”
“That may be true, but I know you,” the wounded man confessed to the king, “for I have been your enemy, sworn to avenge my brother’s execution and your seizure of my property. I stalked you as you searched for the hermit and resolved to kill you right here in these woods. But, while I lay in wait for you, your bodyguard discovered me and wounded me as I escaped. Had you and the old man not dressed my wounds, I surely would have bled to death.”
He paused a moment and then continued, “I sought to kill you, and you saved my life. Now, if I live, and if you wish it, I will work as your faithful servant and bid my sons to do the same. Again, I beg that you forgive me.”
The king was stunned to hear the man’s story as well as the plans to ambush him while he wandered through the woods alone. But, as he reflected on what could have happened, he also surprisingly felt relieved, for the man had resolved to assassinate him and quite possibly could have succeeded. And preferring to have an avid ally in place of a fervent enemy, the king forgave the man graciously and resolved to restore his property.
Taking leave of the wounded man, the king walked outside to look for the monk and found him once again in his garden, this time sowing seeds in the rows. “I think it’s time I say my good-byes,” the king said, standing next to him. “But before I leave, I wondered if I might ask one last time for your answers to my questions.”
The monk, still kneeling, looked up at the king and claimed, “But you already have been answered.”
“Answered—how? What do you mean?” the king asked, confused, looking down at the monk.
“Do you not see?” replied the old hermit. “If you had not pitied me in my weakness and dug these beds for me yesterday, that man inside would surely have attacked you, and you would have regretted not staying here with me. So yesterday, when you were digging, that was the most important time, I was the most important man, and doing me good was your most important business. Indeed, you stand here because of your choices.
“Later that day, when the wounded man stepped from the woods into this meadow, the most important time was when you tended to his wounds, he was the most important person, and your caring for him is what mattered most.
“The answers to your questions,” he offered, “have always been in front of you. Now is the one time that is important. This present moment is the only time for which you have any choice or power. The person whom to listen to is the person who stands before you now, for you can never know for certain when you will be with another. And what should you do above all else? Do that other person good, for that alone is why we are sent into this life.”
The story, of course, is a metaphor for the questions we face in every moment. We are the king, and our lives are the journey. The monk is the wisdom we hold deep in ourselves. The wounded man is our adversities, and we choose in each moment how we wish to deal with him. If we ignore the wounded man and leave him to die as he comes before us, we lose an opportunity for growth and self-discovery. And then that opportunity is gone. If we resist him, the risk is the same, but we shift our focus to the struggle, missing what else the moment offers. But if, instead, we choose, as the king did, to embrace the man and learn from him, we open our lives to new possibilities. And our experience in that moment is richer.
Whenever my thoughts take me back to Murphy, I marvel at how he was always present. Engulfed with anxiety and compelled to react, he did not try to resist his aggression, but instead with intention worked through it, to always ensure that others were safe. And so, he directed his fits at objects.
Murphy’s resolve was exceptional. But where he focused is not unique. Animals, by their very nature, fully live in the present moment. Clearly, they remember the past, and certainly they anticipate the future. But they—unlike us—do not dwell on them. A springbok gazelle at a watering hole, while drinking along with the rest of the herd, does not stop to ponder his reflection, thinking back to the good old days when he was a younger, more virile buck. While lost in thought about his past, he could easily end up instead as prey. Likewise, the cheetah that’s stalking him does not then worry where he’ll find his next meal when the buck starts pronking to warn the herd that he is near. Both predator and prey are fully present in the moment, aware of other animals, themselves, and their environment.
Now and then at the end of the day while driving home, I find myself turning down our street with no recollection of the last few miles. It’s unsettling as the driver. Where was I? What did I miss? What other cars were on the road? Did I stop at the stop sign? Which route did I take?
My daughter asks, “Can we do it after homework?”
“Huh?” I jump back from my thoughts. “Do what?”
What was I thinking?
Whether because of the pace of our lives, the reasoning power of our human brains, or the simple indulgence of dwelling on ourselves—our hopes and wishes, worries and fears, concerns, frustrations, priorities—we live so much of our lives lost in thought: reflecting on the past, dwelling on the future, or thinking of some time other than the moment, some place other than where we are right now. But we do so at a costly price. We miss what is right in front of us. We don’t even notice the wounded man or, if we do, we choose to ignore him or even fight to be rid of him. And unlike the king, we don’t ask the monk, even as he softly reminds us to notice.
Early this morning, while at the zoo and making my rounds with a couple of keepers, I looked through the trees in search of the leopards and found them perched high up in the rocks, Jakarta on one and Surabaya on another. And though both appeared as if they were dozing, I knew quite well that they were not. A flick of his ear; a twitch of her tail; through his half-shut eyes, a glint of recognition—all told me that they were fully aware, tracking our movements and our hushed conversation first through one window, then the next.
While watching them, it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard what their keeper, Ted, had said for … how long? Half a minute? Maybe more? I tried to catch up on the conversation by joining the pieces into a phrase—“growling … chunk meat … her first … rolling”—but try as I might, their meaning escaped me.
I confessed, “I’m sorry. I lost what you were saying.”
Ted chuckled. “No worries—that’s okay. You thinking about the meeting this morning?”
“Nah—not really. I was watching them.”
And I was reminded once again how much I look to animals to keep me in the moment. For though I was present with the leopards, absorbed in ministering to their needs, I also was lost to someone right beside me: another moment, another person, another opportunity.
Perhaps we’re conditioned to tune out what’s in front of us—so many faces, so much information, so many choices; perhaps it’s all too much. Maybe it’s just the pace of our lives. Or, possibly, we look past each other, lost in our own private world of thoughts. Yet, when we look at animals, they vividly reflect their presence in the moment.
And that reflection can serve us well. When we fail to hear the monk, the animals around us offer a bridge from our thoughts back to the present—a reminder, an embodiment of three questions we should ask ourselves: When is the right time to begin? Whom should we listen to? What should we do now?