Living — Page 17 — Intuitive and Spiritual Consulting, Past Life Regression

Living on the Planet of Awesome and Forever

October 6, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

I live on the Planet of Awesome and Forever.

I have proof.

Sometimes my planet is real and physical: I revel in the sun and rain, the dark and stormy, the people and the beings who make me laugh and think while challenging me to be my best, no matter what.

Always my planet is a state of mind, clear in the choice of love over fear.

Love drives the Planet of Awesome and Forever. There are a lot of us here. It’s time for everyone else to join us. Here’s why.

I keep hearing how bad things are out there, how desperate people are, how survival means anything goes.

Well, anything does not go. Not on the Planet of Awesome and Forever. Here’s what that means for me.

In many ways 2011 has been a wonderful year for me: I won a prestigious national award for my book, I launched a new kind of intuitive consultation practice—a partnership with my crystal, Fallon—and I’ve met fascinating new people on their own amazing journeys. It’s been both humbling and exciting.

I’ve also faced stunning difficulties:

a virulent flu that derailed most of my year
a crisis that both complicates and enlightens my future
people who learned from me and then stole my work
people who expected me to work for free while they paid themselves (welcome to the new feudalism)
negligent and uneducated vets who endangered my dogs

So here’s what I did:

I took time to get well.
I looked for alternatives that make life easier for me and for my family.
I turned some matters over to an attorney.
I strengthened my resolve to model compassionate, thoughtful interactions.
I continued to quietly build a business that enriches my life as it serves an enlightened community.
I’m bringing the vets up on charges. Oh, you better believe that one!

And here’s what happened, just in the last few weeks.

I am finding answers that are healthy and make sense.
I discovered attorneys can be a good thing, and that controversy can both enlighten and strengthen.
I decided that if I’d had a choice 20 years ago, I’d still choose the pain and limitations of being disabled and having to reinvent a life over being an asshole and a thief and never finding my path.
If you open yourself up to love, fear just bounces the hell off:
- I’ve made wonderful new friends who think my intuitive practice with a partner who’s a crystal is intriguing, fun, and worthwhile.
- Neighbors came running to help my recovering dog.
- A close friend whose mother is dying raced to the vet ER and massaged a painful kink out of my shoulder.
- A dear friend who is undergoing her own family crisis cheerfully bathed my stinking dogs in exchange for a home-cooked meal.
- Two wonderful vets who love my dogs expertly cared for them.
- I finally met my eldest dog’s ‘grandma,’ and we’ll be celebrating life, love, and Cavaliers with her and her family next week, on what will be my multi-species family’s 13^th anniversary together.

Life is awesome!

Choosing Love Over Fear in a Practical World

Here’s what I know. Choosing love over fear doesn’t solve all our problems, because we won’t always agree. But choosing love does model our choices.

My experiences this year have sobered and intrigued me. What I and so many people see out there is troubling and encouraging. Troubling, because serious problems exist. Encouraging because many people are choosing healthy, compassionate ways to explore and resolve them.

We urgently need to define community, whether it’s our work or our social life. How do we want to live together, and how will we?

Make no mistake: living on the Planet of Awesome and Forever is not naïve. It is not turning a blind eye to the problems. It recognizes the increasing hostility in our society, the strange personal and business meltdowns that are justified in the name of survival. The disquiet is everywhere. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.

Make note: it is not only humans who are concerned. Remember, I work as a professional intuitive, I talk with all manner of beings, and they, too, are advocating change.

It’s time for change.

The first change is a truth check:

Anything goes does not work.
None of us will survive if ‘survival’ defines our lives.

So here’s a plan:

Quit counting the desperation.
Start counting the awesome.

Here are my awesomes.

I have the world’s greatest family: a woman, two dogs, and a cat are proving that we’ll always be a family, in body or not, because on the Planet of Awesome and Forever love endures.

If we have to have bad days to get to the good ones, then we will. And we’ll make them count. Because there’s no other real, practical, inspiring choice than love. It’s awesome. And forever.

We live on the Planet of Awesome and Forever:

Where nothing is too hard or too much work or too painful
Where all beings are held responsible for their choices: firmly, compassionately, clearly
Because love and truth are always, always awesome and forever

It’s time to take back love, and community. It’s time to stand up for what’s right, to dig deep into conflict with patience and respect and compassion.

It’s time.

Come join us on the Planet of Awesome and Forever.

It’s your planet, too.

How an Eagle Kachina Accidentally Helped Build a Community

September 29, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

My mom loved Southwest art. My dad loved my mom. I loved them. When the eagle kachina dropped into our lives, I was greedily snatching as much time with them as I could, building memories.

One day my dad called and said he’d found an art piece for mom. “Not like yours,” he said wryly.

“Oh, bummer,” I said.

We both giggled, remembering the day years before when I’d announced that I’d bought my first art piece. “Does it have horses?” he’d asked. Of course it did.

“So what is it, Indian stuff?” I asked now, referring to mom’s penchant for all things Southwest, right down to their interior décor.

“Of course,” he said. “But it’s big, so when you come down for Christmas will you take me to get it?”

“Absolutely.” I was touched, my parents never asked for much.

A Family’s Last Holiday

So at Christmas that year, I drove dad downtown to pick up his gift for mom. We got it safely home and unwrapped it together, while Dad told me the story of how they found it. Dad was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, so it fell to me to giftwrap it, ironic, since he had taught me the art of giftwrapping when I worked for him in his business.

We didn’t quite know what to make of this art piece: about two feet wide and tall, it was a copper sculpture, partly painted turquoise, with a curious mixture of human and really big bird. We knew it was the artist’s representation of native American art and spirituality, but that was it: we were appreciative, but ignorant, barbarians.

Eagle Kachina, the tag said. Expensive and hard to wrap, I thought, and not my taste.

But it was clearly my mom’s. Christmas Eve she ripped off my lumpy wrapping and spent the next week dragging Mr. Eagle Guy, as we called it, around the house, trying to decide where to hang it.

I reveled in that Christmas. I got to help my dad give a gift to my mom. I got to listen to my mom babble about it. And I got to share a small family moment with my parents, a moment where we celebrated and had fun together, glorying in the family bond. In community.

As it turned out, it was also the last Christmas I shared with my parents. My dad died in June, and my mom 10 months later.

The Eagle Kachina Comes Home … Sort Of

When we closed up their home, my brother and I sorted out who got what. I insisted on taking Mr. Eagle Man, not because I really liked it, but because it was a concrete reminder of a wonderful last holiday with my parents, at a time when illness and disability dulled all three of us.

No question the piece came home to live with me.

Years went by. Years when I moved the piece around the house. It was beautiful, yes, but not my taste.

It also didn’t belong in my home.

Things like this happen. However they end up with us, the objects in our life don’t always fit. Sometimes we change, or they do, and it’s time for them to move on. The trick is to recognize that and to figure out what happens next.

Truth is, the eagle kachina never fit in my home. These days I work as a professional intuitive, which means I talk with things, from animals to businesses, homes, nature, and, yes, objects, including this piece. Back then I only knew that the piece was sentimental but just plain felt odd to me. It didn’t belong with me. Finally acknowledging that, I thanked it for its service to my family, and asked it to start looking for a new home, while also promising that I would not simply discard it. It was beautiful, full of family memories, and also represented an artist’s vision of a sacred object. It needed to call, and be called, home. Wherever home was.

It stayed with me for a long time, because no matter what I did, I couldn’t find out anything about the piece or the artist, or how to properly, well, rehome it. Not surprising, I guess, because it had been years, and the artist might have moved on, literally and artistically.

The Search for Home

Years went by.

One day, my new friend Tara came by. I was showing her my small condo, and she took one look at the eagle kachina and said, “When you’re ready to sell that, let me know.”

Hmm.

She told me that she collects Southwest art, and she thought my piece would fit well with a large metal sculpture that she’d purchased several years before. She’s a real estate agent and a Reiki master with an easy strong intuition, so when she said she wanted the piece, I just smiled.

She suggested that the store she’d bought her large piece from would know how to value it. So I emailed Hogan Trading Company with a picture and a question.

They promptly emailed back: not only could they put a value on it, they represented the artist, Dale J. Anderson. I spent a few minutes exploring his art at their website. Intriguing. After years wondering, all it took to find the artist was a new, visiting friend.

Strange small world. Awesome universe.

More time went by, because truth is, even when special pieces have to go, a part of you still clings to them. The kachina had to go. Talking with the piece, I knew that it belonged with Tara. The kachina and I both needed time to separate from each other: it was as if we’d both been waiting for its new home to show up before we could really say goodbye to each other. There had to be a new community before the old one could end.

Finally, I told Tara to come get it. Even though she’d only seen it once, briefly, months before, she promptly agreed.

I carefully wrapped it and Tara took it home.

Not long after, she called. The eagle kachina fit perfectly in her home: its beauty and its energy felt great. She was thrilled because it went so well with the treasured, large sculpture she’d invested so much in.

The odd extra touch: when she unwrapped it, she discovered the two pieces were by the same artist.

The eagle kachina really was home.

Treasures of Community

Truth is, I could have kept the piece in the family, or put it up for auction, or done any number of things with it. But the only thing I felt right about was honoring my parents’ love and family bond by finding another family that would fit this piece. It needed a community, and I couldn’t let it go without that.

Its home now is with Tara. For me, the circle is complete. I’ve been lucky enough to meet new people in a new community, and the eagle kachina has bridged both of them. It’s home now. And so am I.

How a Company’s Raffle Prize Helped an Animal Shelter

September 13, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

On the weekend before the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show back in February I attended a pet writing conference in New York City, the day before I won the Merial Human-Animal Bond Award for my book, Bridging Species: Thoughts and Tales About Our Lives with Dogs. Yay!

It was a fun weekend and I met some fabulous people. Winning the Merial Award, a coveted prize in the dog writing world, plus a cash grant, was wonderful. The recognition for writing about new ways to think about the human-animal bond felt great.

I also got lucky and won a raffle prize from Hartz at the writing conference. A few weeks later this enormous gift basket arrived in the mail, full of Hartz treats, combs, brushes, a toothbrush, toys galore, and a wonderful note from Jennifer Dombkowski, Integrated Marketing Manager at The Hartz Mountain Corporation.

It was far more than my multi-species family could use, although these pictures prove that they were fascinated! And, yes, played with a toy or two.

The feature photo here is a shot of the complete gift basket at our vet’s office in Port Hadlock, WA, as the gift was on its way to the Jefferson County Animal Shelter. (My apologies to Hartz, as the gift arrived perfectly wrapped, but was inexpertly unwrapped and rewrapped by, you guessed it, me.)

Thanks to Hartz’s generosity at a pet writing conference in New York, a group of homeless dogs and cats in rural western Washington had some fine treats and toys. Jefferson County’s animals have taken a hit with the tough economy, and this briefly helped.

Every time you think that a nice gesture doesn’t count, think about what tossing a business card into a raffle basket can do for an animal near you. Yep, a nice advertising plug for a company, and a good benefit to some needy animals.

Awesome and forever, two of my favorite words.

How We’ll Make the Economy Work Again

September 9, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

We’ll get the economy rolling again when we start taking it—and ourselves—seriously.

That means we start saying ‘NO’ because we should have said that way back at some crazy point when buying things became convenient, and price and ethics didn’t matter.

What is a fair price? What is a fair profit? How do we exchange goods and services so everyone is comfortable?

Granted, this is a big discussion, but it all comes down to one thing: how we create a worldview that includes an economy that makes sense for all of us.

Like this:

The big retailers are now into ‘rollbacks.’ Yay, they’re reducing prices so goods are cheaper. Score one for … can’t say.

Because what were they doing before? ‘Rollforwards?’ Scoring bigger profits than they needed? So they needed to ‘rollback’ to keep us buying?

And you still do business with them why?

Give a good, sound, win-win answer to that for all of us and our economy will work again.

For all of us.

It’s Summertime: Lavender and Good Business Are Both In!

August 27, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

It’s been a strange summer in Seattle, in fact, two stranger summers in a row. Cooler than normal, and damp when it’s usually dry.

But all’s well because the lavender is here!

I use lavender for my business. I keep huge bunches of the grosso variety everywhere, clumped in vases, draped over towel racks, and enjoy it all year.I keep bunches of the giant Hidcote variety, modernist yet exuberant, in my bright, busy office. Lavender is everywhere here, because it’s our home and our office.

I teach out of my house. My home is a carefully balanced place where many beings visit, many who aren’t human, as my intuitive practice involves talking with all life. My home is a peaceful, energizing space where students come to study storytelling and learn how to intuitively communicate with all life, where clients come to meet and work with me and my crystal partner, Fallon, the citrine Lemurian quartz sphere.

True confession: it’s sometimes difficult for me to do business. I have particular views about how the world should be run, and how we should live in it. I don’t always live up to my ideals, but I believe in tolerance and grace, respect and compassion, humor and good judgment.

That’s why my lavender is important. It is beautiful, it is one of the few plants Grace the Cat won’t eat, it smells great, and it’s a wonderful, vibrationally clearing plant.

I use lavender to make a clearing, cleansing product I make: Fallon Lavender Salt. It’s a combination of coarse ground Himalayan sea salt from Solay Wellness and lavender, in proportions that both look and feel good, which is then infused by my crystal partner, Fallon. It is a unique product, and it makes me laugh, because I never thought I was a crafts person, but then I never thought I’d be an MBA with a crystal ball, either.

But the product itself works first because I only buy the elements of it from people I trust and respect. Salt from Solay Wellness, where I’ve also purchased salt lamps and salt products for over four years. Lavender from Cedarbrook Lavender and Herb Farm in Sequim, Washington.

For two years now I’ve happily called Marcella Stachurski at Cedarbrook. I receive prompt, courteous service, advice on handling the lavender, and neighborly interest in exactly what I did with that much lavender. This year was a strange one: the lavender was a month late, even for the reputedly dry climate in Sequim.

I am impressed with businesses that make an extra effort, particularly in a time when even basic courtesies are missing from our dialogue and behavior. It makes a difference to me that the owner of Cedarbrook was particularly concerned to find the longest-stemmed lavender for me, in a year when it just wasn’t warm enough for the lavender to grow as tall as it usually does. How she decided not to send a variety I was interested in because it didn’t meet “her standards,” and generously gave me extras to make sure I had enough.

I will appreciate their good business for the next year, and so will my family and my clients. Every time I look at the lavender I’ll smile and think that a simple brief business connection yielded a few minutes of warm conversation and an order created just for me, and for my business.

It’s not hard to do good while doing business. I don’t know why it doesn’t happen more often, but for now I’m grateful my lavender is here. We’ll sleep well for the next few weeks as it dries. We’ll smile at our house. We’ll do good business in the coming year, because good people have done good business with us.

Isn’t that the way it should be?

Hug Sale: Get Yours Now!

August 9, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

Vote yes Yesterday I took the afternoon off to have some fun. I loaded up on tasty candy at my local food co-op and headed off to see Cowboys & Aliens with a new friend. Sure, Wall Street was acting up big time (again, and pointlessly, really, how should we handle a spoiled brat?), but I had time off! What could be as cool as that?

Then I saw it, the sign that changed everything.

“HUG SALE!” it read, in large caps. “HUG SALE!”

Awesome! (Awesome is my new favorite word: spin it right, and everything is awesome.)

Just like that my new economic policy was born.

What works in a world that doesn’t seem workable? Where is our strength? Our refuge?

In hugs. In hugs we trust.

Everything works better with hugs. After all, what is a hug? Acceptance, community, peace, fun, humor. You can trade a hug for food, for a good joke, a flower, a business referral, a chance to make a new friend.

You can weigh hugs for value: a quick handshake between strangers is an ‘almost hug,’ worth a quick, shy smile. A quick two-arm hug is worth a friendly hello and genuine interest in ‘what you do.’ A brief shoulder hug acknowledges that we’re in this together, whatever ‘this’ is, and seats us peacefully around the negotiation table. A full-on body hug is the stuff communities are built on: it’s worth everything.

Hugs are barter that makes sense. Tangible, visible proof that what they’re trying to scare us with won’t work. That maybe they’ll have us all in bread lines before it’s over, but we’ll at least be there together, and then we’ll go out and create a world where all life is working, and playing, where together we can create healthy, balanced lives of integrity and meaning.

What would a hug mean to you? How would you barter a hug?

Oh, yeah, about the afternoon off.

My new friend is delightful: funny, warm, and thoughtful. The candy was delicious (I figured chocolate peanut butter malt balls were a curiosity, and possibly edible, but the yumminess was a bonus!).

And the movie? I haven’t been to a movie in years, and Cowboys & Aliens was worth the wait: played straight, so you were as dumbfounded as the people in that town, and, finally, proud. Thrilled that fundamentally flawed, damaged people could put aside their pettiness and effectively collaborate to save family and community, which included complete strangers (but you just couldn’t resist a naked woman, could you, boys, even though it was pointless?).

Let’s see, we already know we have dim-witted and unpatriotic politicians. Even they should learn something from this movie. Hurry up and see it, guys, then line up for hugs!

Hugs for politicians? Absolutely. Full on body hug. They get my acceptance, my thanks for being such obvious idiots that we don’t have to tolerate them any more, and I get my country back. Fair and square.

Hugs. Barter. Community. Let’s go for it. We have nothing left to lose that wasn’t gone years ago. We have a world to gain. Let’s hug it back.

You in?

Yellowstone: It’s Why I Buy Canon USA

August 9, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

Sure, I love my Canon printers. Even the non-techies among us can use them, and if you can’t, they have excellent customer support. I should know: this summer the kind folks at Canon have had to help me install my printer drivers for two printers on three different occasions, as I dealt with computer issues.

Sometimes it isn’t always a great product or great service that makes me like a company. Sometimes it’s what the company does.

In this case, it’s Yellowstone.

Yellowstone National Park is one of my favorite places. I’ve been going there since I was a kid. Thanks to Canon USA, I can go there every day via the webcam service they sponsor.

Every day I get to smile and enjoy Yellowstone, from Old Faithful to Mammoth to Lake Yellowstone.

I don’t get paid to promote Canon, or to tell people what I like. I can say that people always look at the bad things in life, forgetting that there are more people, and businesses, who take the ‘bad’ out of things every day. I’m happy they are there, building community, one person, one business, one national park at a time.

Sure wish I’d known about the Yellowstone webcam before I bought my digital camera. I’d have bought a Canon. You can bet I’ll always look there first next time I’m buying something. Just because they offered not just something I like in a webcam service, not just because they were smart about advertising (sure, they’ll get business just because they sponsor things like this), but because sometimes selling is about service. And having some fun while we’re all at it.

And thanks to the people who maintain the webcam and keep it up for all of us.

Check it out! The Yellowstone Webcam: http://www.yellowstone.co/webcams.htm.

The Camperdown Elm: What Are We Doing to Nature?

August 6, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

I’m staring at a Camperdown Elm as I write this. I’m in my car, at Port Gamble, Washington. The dogs and I are going to see our vet (yes, we drive a minimum 5-1/2 hours to see the vet). Every time we do that, we stop at the park at Port Gamble to stretch and explore.

For 10 years I’ve been wondering about this tree. For 10 years it’s creeped me out, and today is no different. You look at this tree and you wonder what in heck we’re doing to nature.

Turns out, somewhere around 1640, the earl of Camperdown, or somebody who worked for him, noticed a sport growing on the floor of the earl’s elm forest (note the irony). Of course the logical thing would be to figure out what it was and see what it did next, but why be a logical gardener? They dug the poor thing up and grafted it onto a Scotch elm tree and the rest is creepy mutant history.

Seriously.

This tree is a parasite. It only grows as a graft on that particular kind of elm. A Scotch elm. When it takes hold they cut the Scotch elm away (as in murder). The new tree is called a Camperdown Elm.

Got that? A perfectly good tree dies to make room for something—a mutant—that only humans can make. Not nature. Humans. It can’t reproduce itself.

This particular Camperdown Elm was planted in that spot in Port Gamble in 1875. I have no idea how long it’s supposed to live.

The question is, should it? How far do we go in altering nature? What would this ‘sport’ have become if Mr. Earl of Camperdown had let it be? If everybody who grafted one of these things had chosen to let the original tree live instead? Would the ‘sport’ have changed on its own? Would it exist at all?

I talked to this tree today. Yes, I talk with things. I was trying to withhold judgment, to not dislike the tree because of my perceptions of the perceptions of Mr. Earl back around 1640, and of all those people since then who think the whole mindset that would create a Camperdown Elm makes sense.

The response? The tree is angry and quite mad. As in, crazy, ferocious, insatiable. “Eat, eat, eat,” it said, over and over again. I backed away, taking my kids with me. We won’t visit it again.

This isn’t the first time humans have changed a plant at our whim, and not nature’s. Thank goodness, or I might not be eating marionberries this week.

Humans do this all the time, alter things to suit ourselves. It’s why our gene pools, from food crops, to animals, to our fellow humans, are so small, which is stupid and multiple topics for other days.

But, for today, when does our fascination with what we can do make sense and when is it just plain hubris?

I look at the insane Camperdown Elm (which also says it is dying, by the way, for anyone who cares to check), and I shudder.

How do we explain this to each other? To our children? To nature? How do we choose to live in, and with, the world?

The Camperdown Elm. A mutant tree that only exists by human intervention that requires murder.

Ick.

We’re Cat’s Eye Writer’s First Guest Writer

July 13, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

I was Cat’s Eye Writer’s first guest poster!

Judy Dunn is Cat’s Eye Writer. Back in June she ran a contest looking for her first guest poster. I decided to join in the fun and won, even though Judy writes about blogging (and she’s an expert, so check her out). It was a great experience for me, an opportunity to expand the reach of my emerging magazine, Bridging the Paradigms, and also to simply connect with people who value both their animal families and the possibilities of looking at the world in a slightly tweaked way.

It was also fun, and that’s something we go for as frequently as possible here at Alchemy West. Unfortunately, a lot of not so fun things interfered with me getting this post up: the little things like major computer failure followed by the domino effect (don’t ask how many things can go wrong at once, it might come your way, and you don’t want that). But we are at last back to work!

Bridging the Paradigms is about creating community with all life, from our animals to our homes, businesses, and the land around us.

As I continue to build community through my work, I am thrilled to meet people like Judy Dunn: smart, talented, honest, and community-minded. That makes Judy and her business one of “The Likables”: people and businesses who make a difference in the world by being the best they can be, and create community by example.

Judy Dunn is a blogger, content marketing specialist and author of “The Guide to Showing Up Online.” Her blog, Cat’s Eye Writer, is on the alltop.com list of best blogs and a winner of a 2011 Top 10 Blogs for Writers. She writes there about how people can attract more online visitors with compelling copy, a true voice and smart social media strategies. Follow her on Twitter at @CatsEyeWriter.

So check out my post at Judy’s blog on creating rituals with animals.

And then check out the following week, where Judy hosted three other writers. And then, well, keep up with what Judy’s writing about. It works.

Thank you, Judy!

Lending a Hand … or a Leash

June 15, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

Hero Dog Alki

I’m clumsy. I survive by assuming everybody else is, too.

Despite the obvious (and frequently embarrassing) hazards, it’s a pretty good way to live. Really.

Don’t take me wrong. Injuries, hurt feelings, creepy people and events: not into them. But I am into building community, and for me that can sometimes mean being clumsy.

Lending a Hand

One afternoon I was on the beach access ramp with my dogs. Tree-sized driftwood blocked the ramp, so the woman walking towards us carrying a baby had a difficult climb.

What would a clumsy person do? I stopped and offered her my hand.

She politely refused, but as she climbed up on the log, it rolled and threw her off balance. As I reached for her, she clutched the baby tightly in one arm and held out the other, saying, “I’ll take that hand.”

In a few seconds both were safely on the ramp.

Lending a Leash

Several weeks later I was out alone with my younger dog, Alki, who has recently become deaf. Alki has understandably been emotional, cranky, and skittish about becoming deaf, especially with other dogs.

That day, a loose dog ran up to us, a dog I thought might live nearby. Now any dog can be dangerous, especially a strange one. Plus Alki was once mauled, and I was injured saving him while beating the crap out of the attacking dog (fierce mama, that’s me). So I hesitated.

What would a clumsy person do? I stopped to help the dog.

I called it to us, making sure it kept its distance but stayed with us (and out of the street). While I was calm and cheerful, I closely watched both dogs. As the loose dog warily regarded us, Alki visibly braced himself, gently greeted the dog, then quietly and calmly helped me herd it. When the dog stopped to sniff something, we waited. When it wandered away, Alki urged it back with a head shake that could only mean, “Follow us, buddy.”

Eventually we got down the block, and two neighbors out with their dog stopped to help. The wandering dog was soon reunited with its family.

The point? Oddly, being clumsy works.

We can worry that the world has too many problems, and nothing we can do will matter. Or we can assume that we’re all clumsy, together, and lend a hand—or a metaphorical leash—when we can.

It’s all part of building community. Is your way easier than being clumsy? Tell us about it.