David McElroy

I have an old friend who’s dying. You won’t read his obituary in the paper when it happens. I’m the only one who’ll notice or care. But my world will feel a little bit empty when Thomas leaves me very soon.

Some of you who have dogs or cats know the incredible attachment that many of us feel for the furry friends in our lives. They’re not just animals. They’re family. We feel real love for them — and they they need us, many times in ways that make you certain they’re capable of feeling more than some people believe.

Thomas is about 18 years old. I told the story last August of how he came to live with me, so I won’t repeat it here. He wasn’t supposed to end up here. If a woman had done what she promised to do for him, he would have ended up spending his life on a farm not too far from here. But since she didn’t, I ended up scooping him up in my arms and carrying him half a mile or so home. He’s never left — and he’s spent a good deal of the time since then in my arms.

He’s been going downhill badly since January. He’s always been a jumper, and even in his old age, he still jumped to the top of the bookcases to sleep and be alone. One day in January, he apparently fell off the top of the bookcase. He had done that many times, but this time he fell behind it, jamming his body between the wall and the bookcase almost all the way to the ground.

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One of the biggest problems I see with extremely bright libertarians and anarchists is that they understand formal logic far better than they understand human psychology — and they tend to believe that logic is enough. Unless it changes, that mindset is always going to keep them from understanding people or changing the world.

What’s probably worse, it’s going to keep them from understanding themselves and being as happy as they should be.

I’ve struggled with the issue of balancing logic and emotion ever since I was a child. It didn’t start as a philosophical question. Instead, it all started with Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, who’s the personification of the ultimate rational creature.

Like so many nerdy Star Trek fans, I liked Spock and his mantra of logic, but I ultimately found that I identified more with Captain Kirk. The half-human, half-Vulcan Spock was coldly rational and didn’t normally show emotions, while Kirk was the epitome of emotion at times. Despite that, he could be smart and extremely rational when he needed to be. I found myself debating whether pure logic was really the best way.

My 14-year-old self came to a conclusion that still works for me today. I decided that our emotions and intuition — all those things that are hard to put labels on — are the part of us that determines what we want and what our values are. It’s the part of us that decides to be honest or to cheat to get what we want or that it’s worth the effort to win some particular person’s heart.

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Arthur was a 47-year-old disabled veteran. For 15 years, doctors told him he would never walk without braces or some kind of assistance. He accepted this as fact.

He says he had basically given up. He had been injured in the first Gulf War and too many jumps out of airplanes as a paratrooper had taken a toll on his back and knees. He gained a lot of weight. He couldn’t run or walk without braces. He even used a wheelchair at times.

Then Arthur found a yoga instructor who was touched by his situation and wanted to help him. With his help, Arthur’s transformation was amazing. Please watch the short video below and listen to what happened — and how from “no way” a way was found to transform his life.

I’ve written before about the need to keep trying to achieve things when they’re really what we want. There are many times that we’re close to achieving our goals when we walk away. (Re-read a story I told a few months back about people who quit “three feet from gold.”)

Arthur radically transformed himself. Most of us would have given up completely instead. I need to be constantly reminded of Arthur’s lesson. Maybe you do, too. It might be a sappy and emotionally told lesson, but it’s real.

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