Will in Life
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"The essential thing is action. Action has three stages: the decision born of thought, the order or preparation for execution, and the execution itself All three stages are governed by the will. The will is rooted in character, and for the man of action character is of more critical importance than intellect. Intellect without will is worthless, will without intellect is dangerous."
—Hans von Seeckt
The Enchiridion by Epictetus
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As in a voyage, when the ship is at anchor, if you go on shore to get water, you may amuse yourself with picking up a shellfish or a truffle in your way, but your thoughts ought to be bent toward the ship, and perpetually attentive, lest the captain should call, and then you must leave all these things, that you may not have to be carried on board the vessel, bound like a sheep; thus likewise in life, if, instead of a truffle or shellfish, such a thing as a wife or a child be granted you, there is no objection; but if the captain calls, run to the ship, leave all these things, and never look behind. But if you are old, never go far from the ship, lest you should be missing when called for.
Epictetus
Colorado Dreams
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Facing the Collegiate Range, we came across this diner. Amazingly, the interior is done in a Caribbean style. It's just a burger and breakfast but it all tasted great in that high altitude mountain air.
Mesa east of Durango, facing north. It's just outside Pagosa Springs.
The Gunnison etched a vast, deep canyon into the Mesa over millions of years. It is called the Black Canyon because, at best, sunlight reaches its bottom for only 32 minutes a day. The local Native Americans avoided it out of superstition.
The Collegiate Range, the second range just west of Colorado's Front Range. While the latter contains Pike's Peak and is home to four 14'ers, the Collegiate Peaks rises off the valley between them with a line of 9 14'ers, another six 13'ers, and is home to the Continental Divide. It is an incredible sight of one massif after another, a wall of massive peaks. Coming upon them going east after Monarch Pass takes the breath away.
Running with Dogs
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While on a run, I thought of Candace Burt's recent post about running with her dogs. Current research suggests that dogs were domesticated from wolves multiple times in multiple places as humans spread across the Earth. This suggests that the mutual benefits were strong. It is easy to see how homo sapiens or even his predecessors derived advantage from this partnership. Proto dogs brought increased visual, aural, and olfactory acuity to the relationship. Wolves and humans are nearly unique in their ability to trot and run across vast distances to hunt or, in the case of humans, gather. Some paleoarcheologists believe that running may have been humans' killer advantage in competition for scarce food. But, as I run and think of dogs as running companions, have to wonder if the partnership between humans and dogs might have been the actual advantage that propelled humans to the position of apex predator. Dogs extend human hunting senses far beyond our natural limitations. It is easy to envision how this was a strong selective mechanism on both species; we both ate well thanks to the partnership. When the night came, humans must succumb to sleep in a world of night time predators. Any dog owner knows what good sentinels his partners can be. Likewise, with our relative lack of need to sleep, proto dogs may have gained increased protection by remaining near human encampments.
As Canis Lupus slowly became Canis lupus became Canis lupus familiaris, it became the only animal that could actually read human facial expressions, as research now suggests. This would be valuable feedback to man's best friend as not all humans and not all human emotions are beneficial to dogs. There is some preliminary research suggesting that dogs can even communicate back to humans with facial expressions of their own, increasing the richness of the inter-species communication. One can view the human-dog relationship, at least in hunter-gatherer societies, as a symbiotic one.
In light of this, we can understand the human love for dogs and their mindless, instinctive need for us, no matter how we often treat them. We can also think of those who abuse them as something proto-human, sub-human.