Make Room For Screen Doors

Hudson was so excited. We'd just returned from our morning walk and as I took his leash off in the living room, he spotted Maddie sitting on our roof deck with her cup of coffee. As is his custom, her wanted to nuzzle her to let her know we were back. So he took off running like the puppy her turns into when he's around the woman who rescued him 12 years ago. As he bounded for her, he went up two steps and smashed into the screen door that stood between him and Maddie.

What a way to start a Monday.

The screen of the door fell to the side, and he snuck through the newly created gap in the doorway and pushed his snout into the side of his now speechless target.

It took us a full three minutes to stop laughing.

Our roof deck is even more accessible than we knew it could be.

Fast forward 10 hours.

Hudson and I return from our evening walk to see that Maddie is back from her studio. She's catching up on emails from the sunny roof deck, and Hudson spots her again. But this time, when I take off his leash, he runs to the steps and stops.

He stares at her and whines, but he stands still, his front pause up the first step. She calls to him, but he stays put.

I walk over and give his collar a tug toward the outside through the now completely open space where the screen used to be.

He thought the screen was still there.

When he returned inside for his dinner, he stopped from the outside where the screen had been and waited for me to open the now-nonexistent door.

The thing that he'd charged head first into and removed was now the thing keeping him from taking the same action but with the barrier removed.

His experience clearing the obstacle had put a warning sign on his next interaction with the setting of the victory and made him cautious and nervous about doing it again.

Damn, does that feel familiar.

In a conversation about climbing the path in front of us, my good friend Ginny Clarke shared that we often think about our ascent as a linear path, that it would look like we were going from one side of a 2D map up to the other side. But in reality, we are more often circling the mountain as we ascend to the peak. And in that spiral upwards, we experience the same side of the mountain multiple times, but at higher and higher altitudes.

Life isn't linear and doesn't always reward us for having been to this side of the mountain before. It may feel very familiar, but it is further up the mountain. Don't let the feeling of sameness dull your sense of awareness and poise. But remember, you already made it through something like this before; you have what it takes to do it again.

Cheers to your climb - what's come before and what's yet to come.