This past weekend our dog Tom committed suicide.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean that literally, as in he intended to die, I doubt dogs think like that.\u00a0 But we took him to the dog park, and while we weren\u2019t paying attention he ate quite a bit of grass.\u00a0 The grass stopped him up and he couldn\u2019t cough it up and all of a sudden he died.\u00a0 It was horrible and I blamed myself for it.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t take his situation seriously as he was trying to couch up the grass, until it was too late.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure what I could have done, but I felt like I should have done something.\u00a0 It\u2019s probably not a realistic guilt, we live far from the nearest emergency vet and by the time we realized it was a problem and could have gotten him there he still would have died.\u00a0 But I carried and carry that guilt of not having done something.\u00a0 I\u2019m working through it, because that\u2019s what one should do.\u00a0 Feeling guilt for things is very normal – unless you don\u2019t have a conscience.\u00a0 But if you\u2019ve done all you can to deal with the situation, done due diligence, made amends, perhaps paid it back, it\u2019s time to let go.\u00a0 One of my favorite quotes is from Rafiki in the Lion King.\u00a0 He whacks young Simba with his staff and when Simba asks why, Rafiki says, \u201cit doesn\u2019t matter, it\u2019s in the past\u201d.\u00a0 This is I think the sagest of wisdom, let things go, they\u2019re in the past.\u00a0 True sometimes your past can haunt you, and if a situation is ongoing it may not be possible to put it behind you yet.\u00a0 And maybe you learned a lesson from whatever it is that haunts you, but when you can, let it go (from another Disney film).\u00a0 Llearn the lesson, live in the now, look forward to the promise of the future, but put the ghosts behind you, \u201cit\u2019s in the past\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This past weekend our dog Tom committed suicide.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean that literally, as in he intended to die, I doubt dogs think like that.\u00a0 But we took him to the dog park, and while we weren\u2019t paying attention he ate quite a bit of grass.\u00a0 The grass stopped him up and he couldn\u2019t cough […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.harmonyulc.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.harmonyulc.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.harmonyulc.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.harmonyulc.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.harmonyulc.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.harmonyulc.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34,"href":"http:\/\/www.harmonyulc.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.harmonyulc.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.harmonyulc.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.harmonyulc.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}