This morning I set out with my dog on our two-mile walk as usual. And as happens not uncommonly, we crossed paths with another dog.
This one, unfortunately, was a small, unleashed dog—the worst possible combination. You see, my medium-sized dog intensely dislikes little dogs, and I have no doubt that she could do serious damage to one if she wanted to. And when any unrestrained dog approaches us as we walk, in either friendliness or hostility, it’s touch-and-go what the chemistry between the two will be.
This little dog had noticed us, so there was no way to get by safely. I heard a person calling, yet this person was nowhere in sight. So I made the only wise choice: turn around and head back the way we’d come. No big deal, really; since we were about halfway around, our walk would end up being about the same length either way.
What I didn’t expect, however, was how different everything looked on the other side of the road! I’d taken exactly the same route every day for years, always going the same direction. On the “new” side, however, I saw things I’d never seen before: lovely gardens, inviting side roads to who-knows-where, even an artsy green wrought-iron bench in someone’s yard.
The lesson in this is that sometimes things are very close to us, and have been all along…but we don’t see them until we make one tiny change.