Dogs will be dogs, but who will you be?

He might look cute by my side, but don’t be fooled – he would kill, and brutally so, if given half a chance.

Today, while the front door was open for about a second and a half, he bolted out like lightening to chase a cat.

Worried that his blinkered reaction might get him hit by a car, I went after him.

(I knew the cat would be fine – dogs never get the better of cats!)

Although his breed isn’t particularly renowned for being great at recall, he usually stops dead in his tracks when I shout his name in a certain tone at a particular volume…

Not this time, though – he was completely deaf to me and carried on running.

Thankfully, I managed to catch him before he came to any harm.

His instantaneous reaction put him in danger.

I was acting to protect him from himself.

When an animal encounters a stimulus, like the sight of a cat on the drive, it reacts immediately, instinctively.

As humans we’re different, though.

We don’t have to react instantaneously to external stimuli, whether out of fear or any other emotion.

For us, there is a larger gap between stimulus and response.

And we can increase that gap through how we train our minds, create order in our lives and navigate our environments.

This is stewardship.

Now, in times of fear and uncertainty, it’s crucial that we develop and practice stewardship over ourselves, so that we don’t unnecessarily descend into disorder and chaos and then suffer, and cause suffering, as a result.

The world might be going crazy. But you don’t have to.

The question that life asks each of us at some point is who will you choose to be?

There is always a choice.