All my life, I’ve had the sense that I was different from other people.

My teachers shied away from me, and never praised me; I had very few friends. I kept quitting good jobs in anger and frustration.

I  drifted apart from my wife, even my daughter, for a while, I never quite understood why so many people were afraid of me or felt uncomfortable around me.

I left so many behind, or perhaps they left me behind, I was never sure.

Over time, I came to accept this reality, and stopped fighting it or worrying about it,  and withdrew into myself, then my writing, then my photography. Like many people who love their dogs, I felt much more comfortable with them that I did with people.

That was never enough for me, and it isolated me even from the dog world at times, from my readers.

I saw dogs as beings that might bring me closer to people, not take me farther away from them. This, I saw, was the opposite of what many dog people wanted and needed. It frightened me, I wanted to share my life with a human being.

Ultimately, dogs did bring me closer to people. Lenore kept love alive for me, and Frieda was the key to Maria’s trust and acceptance of me. I still love dogs very much, but loving Maria is better, more grounding, and more meaningful in the end.

This, I see, is what I always wanted

In my therapy work, I learned that part of my problem was that the eye could see what we have in common, or it can focus on what keeps us apart from what is different.

“The tongue can praise the wind or warn  against the storm,” wrote Mark Nepo in The Book Of Awakening, “it can praise the sea or dread the flood.”

We are all different, no two souls are the same, even though every one of us breathes the same air, and every one of us dies.

Somehow, we fall into the illusion that one creation is better than another, and we enter what one mystic called the mind’s worst disease: the endless deciding and choosing between what we want and don’t want, what we are for and what we are against.

I think true intellectual or spiritual wisdom comes from accepting other people for the way that they are, and not fearing them for what is different from us. As someone different, this lesson became vital to me, even transformative.

In our country, the mind’s worst disease is its own kind of Pandemic, so many people have come to hate and fear what is different.

Someone messaged me the other day and suggested I should be ashamed of something that I wrote. Couldn’t we just disagree? I asked. She fled, surprised I think.

I had chased another person away, she was frightened of something different.

In learning to accept, even love the different, I’ve opened my life up both to love and friendship, and peace with myself.

I no longer blame myself and wonder why some people fear and feel uncomfortable around me. It is just the way it is; it is just who I am.

In this way, I accept the miracle of being, and so much of my fear has gone away.