Losing but winning. And not in a Charlie Sheen kind of way.

A few months back, as my life was severely broken in more ways than I can express, my dog got sick. Now, I know that animals get sick sometimes. They tell you if their nose is dry or they're acting lethargic or if they simply aren't eating right, that its possible they're just sick and they'll get through it. But this was different. This was the first time my dogs behavior had actually scared me to tears.

I would walk into her little den and she would love me in her typical, hyperactive, tail thrusting against walls sort of way but shortly after, would have have spastic bursts of hyperventilating. Followed by endless hacking and deep wheezing. I rode it out for a while until finally, her breathing became so bad that her eyes became blood shot and her tail wouldn't wag and every breath sounded like she was a pack a day smoker. I remember my emotional space at the time. I remember that I didn't believe there was any way for the universe to rip me apart more than I already was. I was already confetti. I was glued together by scraps of narcotics and that was it.

There was one day her hyperventilating didn't stop for about 10 minutes. It seemed like 2 hours. I held her in my arms like a baby and hushed her calmly with my voice thinking that maybe, if I just made her feel comfortable, she would stop. Maybe it was just a nervous thing. Maybe it was just the seasons. But it wasn't. And my greatest emotional efforts did nothing for the situation. She was sick, and I didn't know if, on one of her outbursts, her lungs would just give up and I'd be left without my best friend. There were nights I would just hold her and cry. I didn't want to even think the possibility of her leaving me existed. She was the only one who listened to my pain without judgment, without advice. She knew my loneliness and felt it every night when she became my blanket and my cuddle buddy. She got really good at licking my tears off my cheek and reassuring me that their is a thing called laughter. She was the last piece of myself I owned. She had been through all the heart breaks, and moves, and drug use, and vacations. She knew me. I knew her. I couldn't lose her.

Fortunately, this story just ends with her going to the vet and being put on antibiotics and getting back to her hyperactive, endless puppy state. But I can't help but remember that feeling I had. It was rock bottom at the bottom of rock bottom. It was losing more than I thought I could. It was the feeling of having no control over anything in my life and I kept telling myself 'you wont make it through this without her'.

The fact of the matter is, I could. And I will have to someday. I can't neglect the knowledge of life ending. I've seen it. It happens. And if death doesn't come first, theres nothing insuring that tomorrow, everything you have today is going to be there. People come and go. Friends shift. Relationships end. Parents leave us. Possessions leave us. Hearts leave us. Jobs change. Feelings change. Scenery changes... life. changes. Its a fact.

This understanding brings me to the story of Sidhartha. He had everything at one point; royalty, riches, women, a family. Everything. And he kept wondering what he was being protected from. After losing his mother before he knew her, he understood that suffering was out there but he wasn't going to fully understand it within this comfort zone. So he left. Everything. Bringing with him only himself and his search. He spent years of his life finding gurus to study under, some who told him abstract, hollow lessons and others who told him to MAKE himself suffer in order to understand suffering. None of it worked. It was still there, if not more so than before. So he left all the guidance, he left all of what he knew and was learning and went to a place that he told himself he wouldn't leave until he solved his own problem: figure out why us humans have to suffer. It was there... in that solitude... without anything but his mind and his path ahead of him that he understood what he finally needed to : there is no escape from suffering. We can try. We can run. We can search. We can attempt but the fact is, we will suffer and there's no way around that. The secret, he found, was to find the joy within it all. To embrace the simple moments. To find the calm within the storm. The food we're blessed with. The roof above our head. The conversation your having right now, or the clothes your wearing right now or the dog draped across your bed showing you that today... she is here. But tomorrow, she might not be. Its right now... this very instant... is simply

ALL that fucking matters.