Don't Worry, Be Grumpy

Oh Shit!

During a teaching trip to North America, I taught the following inspirational metaphor:

When you step into some dog shit, don’t get annoyed and wipe it off your shoes. Smile instead and take it back home. There you can scrape off the dog poo under the apple tree in your garden. Next year, those apples will be more plentiful, juicy, and sweet than ever before. But you must remember that when you bite into that succulent apple, what you are really eating is the dog shit! Only now it has been transformed into juicy, sweet apple.

Similarly, when you experience any of the crises of life, it is like stepping into the dog shit. But instead of getting angry, bitter, or depressed, take it home with you and dig it into your heart. Soon you will be wiser and more compassionate. But remember, what is all that juicy wisdom and sweet love? It is just the dog shit of life transformed.

A couple of hours after delivering that awesome piece of advice, at a rest stop on the highway, I happened to step into some real dog shit. My driver, who had just heard the brilliant metaphor, refused to let me back into his vehicle until I had scraped every bit of the dog feces off both of my sandals. He literally pooh-poohed my dog-shit simile. That is the problem with many people these days. They live in apartments cut off from nature, with no garden to transform the shit into fruit.