What if it is my job?

Last updated on September 20, 2023

…

I had asked him to pull over but he didn’t. “They can be dangerous when they are hurt.” the driver said and then we passed by the dog.

The animal was in the ditch, on its side, there was no movement. “What would we do with it?” He continued talking when he saw me turn my head so that I could look outside the back window. I didn’t say anything. I was young and didn’t want to upset my date.

“Someone else will take care of it,” he assured me. Later on, when I got older I learned that’s just something people say to comfort themselves. Someone else will do the right thing. A logical conclusion, it’s a theory people come up with when they try to push the responsibility away from themselves.

The rest of the date didn’t go as planned. The young man had lost all appeal to me and I wanted to go back home. I couldn’t shake the image of the dog off. I couldn’t shake off how it had made me feel.

I didn’t feel regret, it was much more than that -but I didn’t realize it right away.

For days and weeks afterward I thought about the dog. Yes, I am an animal lover but I don’t think that was the only reason why I couldn’t get the incident out of my mind. It went so much deeper! What had happened that day went to my core, the essence of my being.

Some call it spirit, soul, or heart. I don’t know what else to call it other than my core, the center of me. I don’t have a name for it, but I know where it is. It’s embedded deep inside of me and on rare occasions, I can feel it.

It wasn’t about the dog anymore, it was about me. I had felt the need to do something and someone else’s unwillingness -or cowardness, perhaps laziness- had stopped me from doing the right thing and I had not complained, but quietly accepted it.

Would I have done the right thing? I don’t know, maybe the guy was right and I could have been bitten. I will never know. Neither will I ever know what happened to the poor dog.

Maybe he was already deceased and we would have wasted our time. Again, I will never know.

To this day, almost forty years later, I still recall everything. The car was white, a small pickup truck. The young man who had seemed so handsome and attractive at first had turned out to be average at best, and not interesting at all. The dog was black, a mixed breed, perhaps fifty pounds.

I remember how it made me feel -about me. I hadn’t been strong enough to voice my opinion again, hadn’t been brave enough to speak up louder when I should have. I gave in to the lie that someone else would take care of the animal. I walked the way of fewer obstacles but it didn’t give me peace. Not at all! Quite the opposite.

I learned that day that not acting makes me feel uncomfortable and I rather be bitten, than not take the risk to do what I feel is right -even though it might not be.

Just like every other person, so often I don’t know what’s the right thing or the wrong thing, but I always know what feels right -to me.

Did I get bitten in my life? Yes, of course, was that even a question?

What if it’s my job and getting bitten is part of the deal.

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