The Dog and the Paints

Metropost
March 4,2006

TODAY’S BEST
Muffet Dolar Villegas
The Dog and the Paints

We all want to be happy. H.C. Matten wrote that the way to happiness is simple. “Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self. Think of others. Do as you would done by…”
It seems easy to follow these rules to a happy heart, but when we are confronted with situations, they seem bigger than we can handle.
Years ago, when we bought a house in a new neighborhood, a set of my oil paints was stolen by someone who painted his dogs with my grumbacher paints (which to me ,costs a fortune), my heart was a wreck. They are just paints, but they mean more than that.
The teenage boy knew that I knew and he was proud of it. I was beating a deadline for a solo painting exhibit and I had scrimped and saved for those paints.
My loss and his guts to show off my paints all over his dog provided a fertile ground to nurture my anger to become like a monster.
It was hard to paint, for every stroke reminded me of my paints and the dog. Later on I realized, that it wasn’t the lack of paints which disabled me to create landscapes and gardens. The problem was not the paints or the dog, but it was my heart.
They say that when we hate our enemies we give them the power over us. We allow them to steal our sleep, peace, health and joy. We are fulfilling their motive to hurt us. We give them a way to make us exactly like them. Bitter and dark.
Hatred is like an acid. It corrodes the vessel that holds it. The longer it stays, the weaker the vessel becomes. The only way is to release it and let it go…don’t give it a shelter even for one night in your heart.

I regained back my peace by not having my paints returned to me, but when I changed my heart.