The Experience
This is Fruitycake. I’m as tired as the day is long. And around here in this Italy place right now, the days are very long. The sun comes up early with the cicadas and sets late with the bats. I’ve never seen so many bats! It is quite an experience to have them fly through the windows at night and then see them hanging from the cantina ceiling during the day. I know there are a lot of things wrong around here, but every day is truly an experience. And not every person allows themselves to have experiences—or even notices when they are having one.
Some persons think simply living is an experience, and I suppose it is. But a real experience sometimes comes at the price of comfort. Because it has been so hot, we have to keep the windows open, and that is when the bats fly inside. If the windows were closed and we had good air conditioning, we would certainly be more comfortable. But we would never have seen the bats. We would never have watched them fly above our heads at night or discovered where they go to sleep when the sun comes up. We would have been cooler, but our lives would have contained one less story.
Now, some experiences I could live without—like the stupid beds that fall down. Yes, I called them stupid beds because why would a bed not behave like a bed and remain upright? A bed has one job. You climb onto it, lie down and expect it to hold you. Sure, falling with the bed may seem like a free ride, but nothing in life is really a free ride, is it? Eventually, you land. Then Girl Person screams, Boy Person tries to put the bed back together and I have to supervise the entire emergency while pretending I was never frightened.
Experiences and truly living life come with a cost. But doing nothing comes with a cost too. When I look back at how much pizza has cost me, wow. It is a lot. But I would do it again. When I think of all the focaccia that has ended up in my belly, that is another cost. Spaghetti too. You get the idea. Everything worth having asks something from you. Sometimes it asks for money. Sometimes it asks for effort, patience, courage or the willingness to be uncomfortable. And sometimes it asks you to share, which is where I generally begin questioning whether the experience is truly necessary.
But the cost of never tasting the pizza would have been greater than the price of eating it. The cost of never walking up this mountain would have been never knowing what waited at the top. The cost of keeping every window closed would have been never meeting the bats. The cost of avoiding every difficult trail would have been missing the waterfalls, the trees, the wild animals and all the smells that told me I was somewhere completely different from anywhere I had ever been before.
Persons spend a lot of time trying to make life easier. They want faster paths, cooler rooms, softer beds and fewer surprises. I understand that. I am a dog who appreciates a soft bed, especially one that does not collapse. Comfort is not a bad thing. Rest is necessary, safety matters and no one should feel guilty for wanting life to be a little easier. But comfort and experience are not always found in the same place. Sometimes you have to leave what is familiar, walk farther than you planned and accept that you may return tired, dirty and carrying a story no one else will completely understand.
I think that is what this Italy place has given us. It has not always given us comfort. In fact, it has often taken comfort away and replaced it with heat, steep paths, broken things, mosquitoes, bats and questions we did not know how to answer. But it has also given us mornings filled with cicadas, evenings filled with bats, waterfalls hidden in the woods and adventures that could never have happened anywhere else. It has given us memories that will remain even after the uncomfortable parts have faded.
Maybe that is how experiences work. While you are inside them, you do not always recognize them as something special. Sometimes they just feel exhausting, inconvenient or completely ridiculous. You may not realize you are making a memory because you are too busy trying to keep a bat out of your fur or wondering whether your bed is about to become an elevator going in the wrong direction. It is only later, when the moment has passed, that you look back and understand that you were not merely surviving another strange day. You were living it.
Dogs are good at experiences because we do not spend much time wondering whether something will look impressive later. We smell it, taste it, roll in it and become part of it. We do not need everything to be perfect before we allow ourselves to enjoy what is good. A walk can still be wonderful even if it is hot. Dinner can still be memorable even if the portion is offensively small. A home can still hold love even when the windows have bats and the beds have personal grudges.
I do not think the goal of life is to collect as many uncomfortable experiences as possible. That sounds terrible, and I would like to make it clear that I am not volunteering for that. I think the goal is to recognize which discomforts are leading us toward something meaningful and which ones are simply telling us it is time to make a change. There is courage in staying for an experience, but there can also be courage in knowing when the experience has taught you everything it came to teach.
One day, we will look back at this chapter and remember things differently than they feel right now. We may forget exactly how hot the rooms were or how tired our legs felt on the path. But we will remember the sound of the cicadas beginning the day and the sight of the bats ending it. We will remember the pizza, the focaccia, the waterfalls and even the stupid beds. We will remember that we were here together, living a life that was rarely easy but was never ordinary.
So today, I am reminding myself that comfort is not the only proof of a good life. Sometimes the proof is in the stories, the lessons, the laughter and the things you never expected to see. Every experience costs something, but so does avoiding life while waiting for perfect conditions.
And if I have to choose between a perfectly comfortable life with no stories and a life filled with experiences, I will choose the stories. I would simply prefer that the stories include more pizza, fewer falling beds and bats who understand that an open window is not the same thing as a formal invitation.
Fruitycake
P.S. Tomorrow, Tuesday, is grocery day, and we urgently need help preparing. We have been told to hunker down because a deluge is expected, and living on this mountain means we must have enough groceries and necessities for Girl Person, Boy Person and me before the extreme weather arrives and makes the path unsafe or impossible to use. If you can help us stock up and remain safely inside during the storm, please contribute through our necessities page at www.tinyurl.com/2tdnecessities, Venmo at travelingdogs2, or Zelle at rachael@2travelingdogs.com. You can also give us dependable monthly support by joining Patreon for only $5 at www.patreon.com/2travelingdogsrescue. Please do not assume someone else will help—we truly need our community to stand beside us before tomorrow’s grocery trip.
