Low diatribe

I want to be my dog.

Not in some whimsical "wouldn't it be nice" way. I mean it. I watch my French Bulldog move through the world and I see something I've lost. Something I'm trying to find again.

Henri's the bravest, friendliest creature I know. And he doesn't carry stories forward.

Someone steps on his paw, he yelps, he moves. Five minutes later, that person is his favorite person again. No grudge. No narrative about what it means. No filter that says "this person is dangerous" or "I should be more careful around them."

Just: that hurt, now it doesn't, moving on.

I was talking to a good friend the other day and found myself saying "I feel broken and need fixing."

Watching Henri heal from a hurt paw, I realized that's mechanical language, not human language.

Broken implies defective. Something wrong with the design. Needs repair to return to factory specs.

Wounded implies hurt. Natural response to injury. Needs care to heal. Might become whole again, possibly different than before.

Henri doesn't think he's broken when he's hurt. He just heals.

Mitch Hedberg had a bit: "I find that a duck's opinion of me is influenced very much by whether or not I have bread."

That's it. That's the whole calculation. Bread equals good. No bread equals neutral. No grudges. No expectations beyond the now. No stories about worthiness or deservingness or past interactions.

Humans complicate this with narratives. We turn "no bread today" into "never appreciated me" into "always taken for granted" into a filter that colors every future interaction.

Henri doesn't do that. Bread or no bread, he's just here. Present. Responding to what is, not what was or might be.

I watch my six year old grandson sometimes. He's the youngest of the grandchildren, and he's autistic. He may not build the filters most people do.

His lack of filters makes life really difficult for him. The world is built for filtered people. For people who've learned to perform, to read social cues, to carry context forward.

But his purity, his authenticity — they're the pinnacle of what I've seen in a human.

He doesn't perform. He lives. He doesn't calculate. He feels.

And I see the cost of both paths. What I envy — his clarity, his authenticity — versus what makes survival easier — our filters, our performance.

My grandson and Henri both move through the world without the weight of accumulated stories. They respond to what is. And watching them, I see some of what I've lost in all my learning.

I've spent years building filters. Learning what to attend to, what to ignore. How to perform. How to carry stories forward so I don't make the same mistake twice.

The filters protected me. They helped me navigate. Helped me build competency.

But somewhere along the way, they stopped being tools and became walls. I stopped responding to what is. I started responding to what I've learned to expect. To stories I'm carrying about what things mean.

Henri doesn't do that. My grandson doesn't do that.

And when I'm hurt, I reach for mechanical language — "broken" — because it feels less vulnerable than admitting I'm wounded. But the language shapes how I treat myself. "Broken" invites judgment. "Wounded" invites compassion.

I know I can't actually become Henri. I can't unlearn everything and return to some imagined state of pure presence.

But I'm learning to notice when I'm responding to the story instead of the moment. To catch myself saying "broken" and choose "wounded" instead. To watch Henri move through the world — no grudges, no performance, just presence — and remember that's still possible. Not as a permanent state, but as a practice.

The filters aren't the enemy. They're just tools that became walls. Henri can't choose when to use his filters because he doesn't have any to set down.

But I do. And that's not a curse. It's a choice.

I want to be Henri because he reminds me of something I've forgotten.

That presence is possible. That wounds heal. That you don't have to carry every story forward. That bread or no bread, you can just be here.

I'm wounded, not broken. And wounded things heal.

Henri knows that, and I'm learning.