Taking Things for Granted

A friend's dog died last night.
She was a Golden Retriever, a very sweet and well balanced dog.  She had come over a few times and had play dates with Syrah the Mighty and (for the most part) everything had gone well.  She was bred last year and had five super cute puppies.  They had taken her in to get spayed - a very common operation - and apparently there were complications.  She passed last night.

I know.  It is a dog.  These things happen.

But it points out to me today the fragility of life.  And how much we take it for granted.

Think about it.  A spaying is something which we virtually take for granted now as a common operation for animals, almost like getting a nail clipped or stitches done. I am sure the vet had done hundreds of them.  And yet for some reason, a very common (but not simple.  Never is any intrusive surgery considered simple) event did not go as planned.

I look at Syrah the Mighty.  We love her, of course, but she is a dog.  Sometimes she can be annoying with her insistent behavior.  Sometimes walking her feels like a chore instead of a privilege.  Sometimes the responsibility of another living creature is an inconvenience to what we think our lives should be.

And yet I was count on her being there when I wake up in the morning.

Perhaps we take things for granted too often.  We assume that things will always be as they have been and so we come to value them all the less for the seeming ordinariness of them.  And then, in the ordinary events of life, we suddenly find that they are unexpectedly gone.

Take time today to value the ordinary things of your life, the things or people that always seem to be there - because life is a great deal more unsettled than we like to believe.