Derek Bodner’s Blog

Yesterday my boss brought his dog into work for the day. The dog’s a golden lab pup, and for some reason just really livened up the day. I started wondering about why this is, and this is the conclusion I took from it.

In my opinion, we tend to overcomplicate our lives. “In order to be happy, this has to happen in my career”. I think a lot of times people tend to spend their lives thinking about what they want people to think, moreso than what they actually want. As long as our outward appearance is that we’re successful, and hardworking, and “amazing” in our field, we’ll be happy. We spend so much time worrying about what we don’t have that we end up not appreciating what we do have. You see it all the time, where celebrities end up not being happy. Success doesn’t make one happy if the road to success isn’t happy. And that’s how I try to base my life. Sure, I take my work seriously. I’m on call 24/7, so I’m never truly “away”. But when I get home, and see my family, that’s what I’m concentrating on. That’s what’s important to me. I don’t want to sit at home and be worried about the project I’m going to have to work on tomorrow when I get in. I want to enjoy the time I have with the people I love.

And that’s what’s refreshing about dogs. They remind you of that. You watch a dog, and all he cares about is the joy he gets from being with you. You watch him wag his tail and bark when you leave the room, and jump up at you when you walk back in. The simplicity in their exuberance is refreshing, and something our culture of “if you’re not being productive, you’re being unproductive” has forgotten.