Our dog Angus died unexpectedly the day before our youngest child turn three. He was a yellow lab, smart and wily as they come, and fiercely beloved by the lot of us. We brought his body home from the vet, where he’d passed the night before, and buried him together in our back field. Our young kids helped shovel the dirt over his box-coffin, eyes dripping tears, whispering the final prayer, saying goodbye. It was heart-wrenching … and, in its own way, sacred. That day is part of our family lore.

My husband and I have owned five dogs in my adult life, and I could tell you stories about each one. If you’ve had dogs, no doubt you could do the same. Dogs are our hearts and our anchors.

But here’s the thing: I don’t truly own my dog, however long I’ve had her.

In her poem “The Grave,” Mary Oliver writes:

A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you
do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the
trees, or the laws which pertain to them.

A dog is a creature that dwells alongside you. You house and feed and walk her daily, and your name’s on her American Kennel Club paperwork … but there’s a sense in which she doesn’t belong to you. You didn’t give her life and won’t enact the decomposition of her lifeless body. You have not that power or control. She is ultimately a being wholly apart from you. This is what Oliver is getting at.

Your dog, like every creature, exists not of its own choosing — also true of inanimate natural objects (rocks, dirt), plants (daisies, carrots), and the elements (water, dirt, rock, air). None come into the world at their own bidding, nor do they call the shots on their existence — and people are the same. We are not our own makers, and while we humans influence our lives and fates in major and crucial ways, we aren’t fully the masters of our own destiny.

Take our appearance. We don’t control our own skin color, height, hair, or eye color (to name a few). Mary Oliver gets at this concept, again using the animal world, in the same poem:

Does the hummingbird think he himself invented his crimson throat? 

He is wiser than that, I think.

OK. But why does any of this matter?

It matters because for us to thrive as humans, we must recognize the limits that come with our existence. We show up on this planet in ways we didn’t choose, and there are parameters of our lives that are necessarily outside of our control. We didn’t create ourselves, or the world. There is a reality that exists apart from us, a reality of which we are ourselves are actually just one small part. Acknowledging this is necessary.

The point is worth reiterating because we live at a time when modernity, progress, and science would have us believe that we can control virtually all elements of our lives. We feel we should control all aspects, even that we have a right to. If we don’t like our eye color, our skin color, our gender, the fact that we will one day die — we should change that! Or so many in our society believe.

We believe that self-direction is the greatest value, the most important thing that we exert as humans. This is autonomy: the capacity to act independently and make our own choices, making life conform to our wishes. Autonomy, we think, is everything. By exerting autonomy, we believe we’ll feel accomplished and fulfilled; where we don’t or can’t exert autonomy we often feel helpless — and hate it.

But autonomy isn’t itself a basic good and can only get us so far. It’s positive when we use it to pursue the basic goods and negative when we use it in ways contrary to the goods. It becomes a trap when it lures us into believing we have overall decision-making power. In truth, we can’t thrive unless we come to terms with the fact that we aren’t ultimately in control of the world. Or our pets. Or the weather. Or our family members. Or even, in some really key way, ourselves — our height, gender, ethnicity, innate capabilities, number of siblings, among other things. (However we can control our thoughts and appetites, our desires and actions, our movement toward virtue and vice — and we must).

When Mary Oliver rightly tells us that we don’t truly own our dog, and likewise when we zoom out from that truth to accept the unchangeable limits within our own lives, it empowers us to do three things.

1. We can live as grateful instead of entitled.

Life is full of gifts and beauties, none of which we are owed to us. The world did not owe Mary Oliver the dog she so loved, but she got to spend years with him — and it enriched her life. She seemed also to have felt grateful (as we can) for her legs that carried her on her beloved walks, the pen with which she wrote, her close friendships. Feeling grateful and feeling entitled cannot co-exist. Entitled people are disappointed and distressed, and grateful people are happy.

2. We can be at peace with the parameters of our lives.

When we recognize that there are limits on our life, and that the life of every human (and the existence of every element on earth) likewise has limits, we can live with acceptance. We likely won’t like every “given,” every immutable aspect of our life; there is likely plenty we would change if we could choose to do so. But since we don’t have that choice, we can yield to reality, decide to live within limits, and move on. This can settle us within.

3. We can appropriately focus our energies on the things we can change.

While there are many things we cannot change and must accept if we are to thrive, there are many other things we can change. We have an enormous amount of power and agency as humans, and the flourishing life is one that puts that agency to work for good. There is knowledge to pursue, adventures to have, character to form, friendships to enjoy, people to love! There are, in short, basic goods to pursue — and these make for a rich, fulfilling life. When we accept what we can’t change, we are left with more energy and vision to be proactive in healthy ways that enrich our life and other’s lives as well.

While we don’t fully own our dogs and don’t have full control over them or even central aspects of our own lives, we don’t have to in order to flourish. The good news is: we have the ingredients we need!

Susan Arico is a New Hampshire-based consultant and writer with focus in digital wellness and the intersection of faith and culture. You can follow her on her Substack, For the Sake of the Good, and at her web site, www.susanbarico.com.