Since adopting both a basset and a bloodhound several months ago, I’ve studied hound breeds by necessity. Everyone jokes about how hounds are noses with legs. Bloodhounds’ and bassets’ excess rolls of skin and long flappy ears serve not only to augment their sense of smell, but also to downplay their other senses. The skin falls forward over the dogs eyes creating blinders for their vision. The hang of those droopy ears obscures sounds, and the excess skin means that the prongs or choke of a trainer collar are muted. Their focus is singularly on scent. It’s made me consider the blinders, softeners, and muters that we adorn and adopt daily in order to navigate our world.
I, personally, flag under the weight of all of the things I should care about. From politics, the environment, and social injustice to the food I feed my kids and the care I take to keep my home tidy, it grows so tiresome that I start tuning it out. I shy from looking at the street person asleep on the sidewalk. I skim the headlines, maybe retweet a story, but move readily on to the fuzzy kitten videos. I order from Amazon with abandon to avoid the crowds of hawkers and desperate souls in the shopping district, even though I know that all of those separate driving trips dust the air with exhaust on my behalf.
Sometimes I think the guilt of not doing enough leads to not doing anything. We care so much that we do nothing.
So, the other day, I picked up some trash in the park. Just that. I kept the blinders on toward the bigger horrors and did a little something that I could do easily. There are so many little somethings that we can do that we forget about.
- Pick up a can in the parkway.
- Open a door for a stranger.
- Smile at your cashier.
- Let someone else go before you.
Those little things make you and others feel good. Feeling good then makes the world just a bit less mean.