Hawthorn Hill Journal by Richard deRosa

Should We Get a Dog?

I am often asked how things are going up here on the hill. My usual answer is: pretty well. I do not get to the village often. And when I do it is not rare, when bumping into a friend, to have the occasion referred to as a “sighting.” Like most guys of my ilk, my needs are few. I am happiest up here where it is quiet and a far remove from the self-inflicted, increasingly disturbing inanities that abound out there in the so-called real world. Lately, we have been thinking it would be nice to have a dog again. When one spends so much time alone, it is nice to have a companion unburdened by human concerns. These days there are so many competing realities that the traditional notion of reality I grew up with is an anachronism. I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I do think our not coming to some kind of agreement about the nature of reality, as well as factuality, puts us in an existential bind.

All this while digging holes for the arrival of some new blueberry plants from Kansas. A neighbor we bumped into recently while on the last leg of our walk opined that there was something cathartic about unrooting dandelions from their walkway. Catharsis can take many forms. I am particularly drawn to those cathartic moments rooted in actual soil. Soil fertility evidences itself in myriad ways. Whether extricating dandelions or digging 15-inch-deep holes for blueberry bushes, the psychic effect is the same, a fertile mindfulness that reaps some useful benefits.

One reality I know in my bones to be valid is that my hole-digging days are numbered, if not over. It is a reality I can live with. One must grasp whatever plausible realities one can these days. I mean, you gotta have a few things in life whose existence, concrete or otherwise, you can depend on. Ambiguity is fine, has its virtues, but as a constant staple in life makes getting through the average day tough. We always talk blithely about basic values, averring that we all share them, but I am not so sure that is true anymore. As I plucked stones and worms out of each hole, I tracked through what I think are some basic values that it is assumed we all share. Not much holds up anymore despite the obvious moral utility of each.

The reality of digging a hole is that, when done right, its future occupant will thrive. If we do not tend to our various gardens up here, especially the vegetable gardens, then we will reap fewer benefits. So a basic value is simply doing the work. Tending to our individual lives in ways beneficial to the self without intruding on the rights and freedoms of others, a notion traceable to Locke, appears to have lost some luster for the most ideologically intransigent among us. A disturbing irony of our age is the willingness of so many who profess to extol the virtues of freedom to harness others to their existential preferences. It makes little sense, at least rationally, but irrationality seems to have, for now, won the day. A reality neither healthy nor consistent with the notion of shared values.

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to make sense of this thing we call human nature. Digging helps. Walking helps. Writing helps. And so does reading. After reading Hannah Arendt’s brilliant study of the causes of totalitarianism, I had a better handle on its root causes. That did not assuage my fears of its apparent ascendency, but it put me on notice of what to watch out for. The ease with which a culture can be manipulated into mob action is evidenced by Hitler’s success in Germany. It is not a susceptibility limited to place; it can raise its ugly head anywhere.

So, given the embarrassing state of our politics, the fact that floods and fires are consuming vast acres of land and countless lives, wars and coups flare up on almost a daily basis, and too many of us seem disinclined to work up enough energy to devote some time on behalf of the commonweal, should we go ahead and get a dog? We seem to be leaning in that direction.

Dick deRosa’s Hawthorn Hill essays have appeared in “The Freeman’s Journal” since 1998. A collection, “Hawthorn Hill Journal: Selected Essays,” was published in 2012. He is a retired English teacher.