The Wealth We Walk Past

Every now and then, the ordinary world catches the light just right and becomes impossible to dismiss, usually while your dog is prancing across the yard with a stick in her mouth like she has just won Best in Show for the third year running.

Her proper name is Penelope, which sounds elegant enough to behave itself, though ours has made no such promise. It is an elegant, literary name, one that reaches all the way back to Homer’s The Odyssey, where Penelope is remembered for patience, faithfulness, cleverness, and the kind of quiet endurance that can hold a household together while the world outside behaves badly. All of that is lovely, of course, but also far too classy for a dog who treats drinking water like an indoor weather system and considers yard sticks a personal inheritance. So we went with something a little more fitting and named her after Penelope from Bridgerton, because she still deserved charm, drama, and a good storyline, just with better gowns and fewer ancient Greek expectations. But we call her Ellie, which feels more accurate to the facts of daily life. Penelope sounds like a dog who should be reclining beside a velvet chair, composed and watchful. Ellie is the dog who takes one refreshing drink of water and leaves the surrounding county under a flood advisory.

I have never really met another dog quite like her. She loves her people with the full-bodied devotion of a creature convinced that every room in the house is improved by her entrance. She wants to be near us, preferably close enough to be included in every conversation and any potential snack distribution. She loves having a good bowl of food in her crate at all times, because who doesn’t love a crunchy snack at 3:30 in the morning? She has her rituals, her preferences, her little attitude, and she moves through life with the bright confidence of someone who has never once wondered whether she deserves to be delighted by what is right in front of her.

But more than anything, Ellie loves a stick.

Not a toy shaped like a stick, because that would misunderstand the entire matter. Not a carefully branded pet-store invention with a cheerful tag promising enrichment, stimulation, and improved canine well-being. Ellie wants the real thing. The crunchy wood. Yard debris. A dry little piece of tree that had no ambition beyond lying in the grass until the right creature came along and gave it a future. Most of us would step over it without interrupting a thought. In fact, I do every single day on our walks together. However, Ellie sees it differently. To her, a stick is not something the yard lost. It is something the yard offered. 

I certainly would not have guessed I would be inspired to write to you regarding a stick in my yard, but here we are. 

Every time Ellie convinces one of us inside that she has to go outside and make sure the world is okay, the first thing she is going to do is find herself a stick. Don’t try to stop her, she will pull you over because for her, it matters that much. She does not wander into the yard with a vague hope that perhaps a stick may present itself if the circumstances are convenient. She begins the search immediately, with the focus of a treasure hunter who knows the map is real and has no time for the unbelief of lesser minds. She sniffs through the grass, inspects the ground, circles with purpose, and rejects the inferior candidates with a seriousness. It’s a consistent daily adventure. 

I don’t mean to get hung up on writing about my dog just aimlessly hunting for a stick in my yard, but something hit different the other day as I grabbed my phone to take yet another picture of her with a stick in her mouth. I started thinking of what must go through her mind. I couldn’t help but wonder the differences in the way we process things. Let me explain. 

I started wondering how she gets to the place where she views an ordinary walk as an opportunity for discovery. I noticed how she steps into the yard each time with the expectation that something good is waiting there if she will only look for it. Somehow, in some way, she has learned to begin again without bitterness that the last one is no longer. But more importantly, and most notable is the fact that she has not stopped believing that the world has run out of small gifts just because the old ones are gone. 

I think we could learn something from that. 

I usually find myself cracking a smile as I watch her begin her rather quick exploration. Her entire everything changes when she finds the right one. She becomes that award winning show dog she believes that she is. Her head lifts. Her tail begins its celebration. Her curls bounce as she steps proudly, and she prances with such unreasonable confidence that you can almost hear imaginary judges applauding from behind the azaleas. A show dog with a walk that belongs at the Kentucky Derby. 

Oh, and don’t expect me to tell her she hasn’t filed her paperwork with Purina dog show just yet because I can assure you based on her confidence, she does not know she has not won Best in Show, and I am not telling her. Some tend to carry their joy with such conviction that correction must be cancelled. 

And where do you think I play into this dramatic episode? I am the built in entertainment who is expected to pretend that I am going to steal it away. Just be warned, she’s a show dog with sass. If you even appear interested in her prized possession, she is ready for you. She lowers herself into that pouncing stance, bright-eyed and suspicious, delighted by the possibility of play but still deeply committed to the protection of her property. She wants you involved, but only under the correct terms. This is a monarchy with curls, and the crown is currently clamped between her teeth. She will gladly escort it back to the front door, just to lay it down like a proud accomplishment.

The next time she goes out, she starts again with the same expectation, as if the yard has never disappointed her. That is the part that stayed with me. 

The picture I used for this blog is just one of many that I have taken of her on our walks. Except this time I was stirred on the inside as I tried to focus in on catching her standing there at the perfect angle. 

 On this particular Sunday afternoon as she stood there proud as ever to have yet another treasure, I asked her why in the world did she choose that one? It was not one of her more impressive finds. I mean I don’t necessarily associate stick finding in the front yard with picking out your wand at Olivanders in Hogwarts, but this one was pretty flimsy and unimpressive. It looked like a stick that had lived modestly and had no intention of becoming a symbol in anyone’s reflective writing.

My one thought as I stood there anticipating an answer from her came in from left field. I wasn’t ready for it. 

It did not matter to her that I stood there and insulted her new favorite stick, she held it with complete satisfaction. Unbothered by my opinion or standard. So I stood there, nearly convicted over a simple stick, I was just shut down by my golden doodle. 

As I spent the rest of my afternoon thinking on why I felt the way I did, I realized something deeply relatable. Ellie was not merely entertained by the stick. She was not using it to pass the time until something better came along. She was satisfied by it in that full, unbothered way that dogs seem to understand without ever hearing a single sermon on gratitude. 

I couldn’t help but compare what I realized to what I could relate with. I noticed that it was blatantly obvious that she was not comparing it to other sticks. She was not wondering if a more impressive one might be waiting near the fence, in fact you would think by the way she acts, the one she has is the only one on the property. She was not resenting the stick for failing to become something larger, shinier, softer, or more useful. She had exactly what she wanted, and what she wanted was simple enough to make the rest of us look a little overcomplicated.

I wanted to write this because I can relate in a different way. I know something about wanting more, not in some grand, movie-scene way, but in the ordinary way most of us know it. I have had the desire for the newer thing, the better thing, the cleaner version, the next improvement, the latest proof that life is moving forward and that I am moving with it. 

We don’t want to admit when we are slightly obsessed with our possessions. Materialism rarely feels like materialism while it is happening. It has better manners than that. Materialism comes to us dressed as ambition, stewardship, improvement, reward, planning, or the reasonable desire to make life just a little better off. Not all ambition is bad. Some of those are good things, which is why the line can be so difficult to see while we are standing on it.

I’m not advocating in any way for less ambition or success. There is nothing wrong with wanting to build, grow, work hard, and make something meaningful with the life we have been given. There is nothing wrong with beautiful things, new things, or the joy of bringing order into a home. The danger comes when those things become more than things. It comes when we begin asking possessions, upgrades, and applause to quiet something in us they were never designed to touch. The danger presents itself when the next thing is no longer a blessing to receive but a promise we keep chasing because we believe peace is hiding somewhere inside it.

The truth of the matter is, I have chased that kind of promise before. Maybe you have too? I have wanted the latest and greatest because, for a moment, it seemed to fit the description of what life was supposed to look like in that season. I have bought things I did not need because they appeared to carry something I did. I have made the mistake of acknowledging accumulation as progress and progress for contentment. I have stood in the midst of what I called my blessings and still felt the ache of something missing.

If I am being honest with you, I would consider that to be one of the quietest forms of poverty. A person can have plenty and still feel poor in gratitude, neglected of attention and poor in the ability to look around and say, “this is good,” without immediately adding a condition or complaint.

Often times we don’t it realize the level of abundance that we live in. The issue is that we can live among answered prayers long enough that they begin to look like furniture. We can receive good gifts and then, once they become part of the ordinary texture of our days, we start looking past them toward something else, more fulfilling. 

Ellie, meanwhile, had a stick.

I stood there in my yard and pondered. A stick, which continues to resist becoming impressive no matter how much meaning I try to place upon it. Yet maybe that is precisely why it teaches so well. It cannot dazzle us into attention. It cannot argue its own value. It does not  pretend to be rare. It is easily missed, which makes it a fitting picture of so much of the goodness we overlook. The wealth we walk by. 

The moments and the memories will always matter more than the merchandise. The clean home that gives the mind room to breathe. The friendship that does not need an audience to be precious. The quiet walk outdoors that does not solve everything but returns us, if only for a little while, to ourselves. The book waiting patiently on the table beside the chair. The people at the table. The prayer that is unhurried because love was never meant to be squeezed into the leftover corners of a day.

These things in our life can seem small, but it’s not because they lack meaning to us, it’s because they are near us. Nearness has a strange way of making precious things look ordinary.

I always write in terms of what’s ahead. What comes next? Why does this matter? Why in the world did you just sit and read an entire blog on a dog and her stick? I want you to step into whatever moment is next for you with a different perspective. The future always has better lighting. The next best thing your striving for stands at a distance and shines because we have not yet had time to dust it, manage it, repair it, schedule it, or become accustomed to its presence. The next purchase, the next achievement, the next chapter, the next season, the next version of ourselves all appear with a shimmer of  promise around them. They seem to say that once we arrive there, peace will finally sit down with us and stay. But distance is a detailed artist. It hides the cracks and polishes the surfaces. Meanwhile, the life already in our hands keeps offering gifts, and we keep stepping over them. Some of us seem to walk past an abundance of wealth every day on our way to obtain more.

Consider a more simple path. Simplicity, at its best, is a way of seeing more clearly. There’s less around us to pull our desire away from what really matters. It is the decision to stop asking life to impress us before we receive it. It is learning that a clean home may bring more peace than a full one, I really like a clean home! Simplicity is the realization that a meaningful friendship may be richer than a crowded room, and that that an ordinary meal with people we love may hold more memories than an expensive experience. 

I think Ellie understands that better than I do, though I am sure she would prefer I not take the time to turn her outdoor habits into a lesson on philosophy and simply take the stick and throw it. I learned something from her. I have watched her continue to step into the yard with expectation. She actually lives life everyday believing there is something worth finding. I have learned that sometimes we should receive what is out there for us without asking it to become something else first.

There is something for all of us to learn in living life with that kind of trust.

I write this to you with my own sense of desire to want to carry more of this perspective into my own life. I want to want what is good without becoming empty in the wanting. I want to work toward what is ahead without despising what is here. I want ambition that still knows how to be grateful, and gratitude that does not become laziness dressed up as wisdom. I want to stop requiring every blessing to feel new before I recognize it as beautiful. If we are honest with ourselves I think we all want to notice the small gifts before they are gone, before they are swept aside, and before they become memories. 

Living life with a heart of true gratitude has a strange richness of wanting less. It does not always mean having less. It means needing less to be awake to what is already good. It means the world does not have to become spectacular before we call it blessed. 

I leave you with this. Not everything has to be rare to be precious. Not everything has to be impressive to be enough. Sometimes joy is not waiting on the other side of our next moment, but is found in the right now. True wealth is not having the most money or the shiniest possessions. Sometimes it is already close, prancing across the yard with its head held high, carrying the ordinary thing we almost missed, if only we could stop and admire it before we walk by.