Conversations with dogs:
• “I love petting you. I am the petter and you are the pettee.”
• “Would you like to go out? It’s a wonderful world out there. It’s my favorite world in the whole universe.”
That last thought is a trick statement, of course. It’s the only world I’m likely to experience in this lifetime, so it may as well be my favorite world, since every other world is imaginary at this stage in the human saga.
The idea of a multiverse is fun to tinker with — that infinite worlds exist where we each made difference choices at crucial moments. Reality is the one where the choices we made are the choices we made.
I’m writing a novel — excruciatingly slowly — that has multiple versions of the same planets, but my point of view is that given the infinite combinations that create worlds, the humans who exist on those worlds bear no resemblance to the individuals who inhabit this one.
Reality is my favorite world in the whole multiverse because it’s the only one I have, but also because if I didn’t go through the awful experiences and bad choices, the sweet and wonderful experiences probably would not have unfolded in the way they did.
I love that my conversations with my silent furry companions led me to a sweet homonym for “petty,” a noun not an adjective. I love having pettees around the house, although sometimes they insist on being petted at inconvenient times.
Part of loving a dog, or anyone, however, is recognizing that in love, the other’s needs are most important, and so at times you must set aside your own needs and desires and just pet the dog or let her go outside. In the end, as a wise poet once said, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
