“Yeurch!!…that’s disgusting…”

“Genetics,” comes the laughing retort.  “You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself.”

“….!”

He has an answer for everything that son of mine. But he’s not getting away with laying all the blame on me!

Still, he has a point. I cannot deny responsibility for my own sons’ creation… though I insist their father must carry half the blame. And our respective forebears

After all… I couldn’t have managed to create this son single handed…. (oh yes, my son, you can take that any way you like…)

I go home to a small dog who has a new game…. a fence jumping game where, instead of the usual trick of deliberately dropping the ball into the flowerbed and standing, looking at me with expectant eyes that say ‘Fetch!”.. she now throws herself over the dividing fence instead… and, as she has only worked out how to jump one way, stands by the little gate singing quietly till I come and let her though.

I know who is responsible for that one…

And the fence will have to go.

But then, I am responsible for the small dog’s laughing attitude to life too. I could have forced her into behaving like a ‘proper dog’, as some have suggested. And I admit it would be nice, sometimes, if she were not quite so vociferously determined to guard the house from birds, helicopters and passers-by… or quite so determined to play ball all day… But she is a delightful companion… a very familiar spirit.

It is an odd thing though, this question of responsibility. The laughing exchange  set me pondering, especially as I am working on the story of Set and Osiris at present and have recently had the question of Judas thrown up on a regular basis. And those are not stories that are as simple as they might look… not just a question of light against dark, not just evil against good. Without the ‘evil’, the wonders that followed could not have happened… so maybe even they were part of the ‘good’.

We are really quick to see where we can lay blame on life, other people, circumstance and ‘fate’. We’re all guilty of it in the quiet recesses of the mind, yet we all know, deep down, that regardless of outside influences, the twists and turns of life… or genetics…responsibility for our own actions and reactions, our own choices, lie squarely in our own lap.

And some seem to want to shoulder responsibility for everything…blaming themselves for any event and circumstance that arises, or foundering in a morass of guilt… instead of just taking responsibility for their own choices.

Of course it is not as simple as that. We all have the filtering layers of influence from family, society and culture to deal with…having to dig through many levels of accumulated and imposed belief before we can see our way clear sometimes. Yet there is always the choice of how we use our free will and that realisation brings a freedom unmatched.

I thought about that yesterday as the farmers ploughed their fields. I live in a village surrounded by them and, on certain days of the year, believe me ‘organic’ has its down side as every breath, every sip, every mouthful is tainted with the horrid aroma of fertiliser.

I thought about it as dawn broke luminous over the same fields as Ani and I romped in the rain this morning…. and as the malodorous taint of wet dog rises from where she sleeps on my feet.

Choices brought me to here and now… today, this moment. I could not now change them even if I would. And the now I stand in holds both the good and the not so good. Yet it is the latter that hold the most opportunity for learning, when you think about it.

Even in the small and silly things…. So what wisdom do I draw from these musings, you might wonder? What deeply meaningful insight can I offer as the sun struggles to break through clouds of dove-grey in this, the 500th post on this blog, so I am told? I shall tell you….

Never let a wet dog sleep on your feet.