Wagging Dogs

17th November 2024
I was out in Liverpool City Centre last night, long story, but I got a last-minute call to go for a drink and met up with a few lads I know. I was stood in quite a rowdy bar in the city centre, not one I would have picked to go into personally. Anyway, there’s a gang of about six of us all stood together talking, when I feel a bit of a thump in my back, and when I turn around, some guy has knocked into me pretty hard, I caught the tail end of him doing an about-turn and pretending to be looking at something the other way. I shrugged it off and went back to talking, when it happened again.

But there was a bit more force in it this time, and what felt like a bit more elbow. I spun around, and this same idiot is there acting like it wasn’t him. So, I leaned in to talk to him, and he at first pretended he didn’t know why I was trying to talk to him, but I moved closer. I said “You seem to be bumping into me a lot there mate” and he said in a drawling Dublin accent “Aye, I do” and just looked away. 

So, probably more confused than anything, I said “Well, it’s probably better if you stop doing that,” and this strange fella just shrugs his shoulders and nonchalantly says “whatever,” and then turns his back on me again. I was a little nonplussed by his casual take on it all. Now you’d expect someone trying to cause a fight to be a little less chilled about it, but I have to give it to this dude, he was very casual about it all. I don’t know whether he was like a professional fist magnet or what, but he really owned it, and was dead cool about it all, it seemed like causing murder for no apparent reason was very natural to him. It was all just effortless.

At this point my best mate Paul, seeing me a bit vexed, asks me if I’m OK, and I relay to him that I’ve got an idiot behind me who’s probably seen more ceilings than Michelangelo, who’s about one more elbow in my back away from seeing this ceiling above us. At which point, my other friend Mick says to me “Come and stand over here out of his way” and I said, quite stubbornly “I’m not moving” almost like a child. I was sulking! Really. I was involved. I’d let it happen; I was entrenched, wasn’t I?

Mick smiled. “Come over here” he said, laughing, like you might tell a naughty child off who’d been caught stealing cookies and has chocolate all over his face. “You are far too intelligent for this, aren’t you?” he asked me rhetorically, still laughing to himself. I said quite seriously “I reckon I’m still well stupid enough to knock him out yaknow”, but then I started laughing with him, and went and stood where he said, because he was right after all. 

I know he was right because that’s the advice I’d give to anyone in that predicament. Don’t attend every argument you’re invited to. “See, told you,” he said, giggling at me (stood on the naughty spot I’d been put on for a time out). “Too intelligent”. I hate when people are right!

There’s this old Buddhist saying, they say: “Don’t let the tail wag the dog,” and that’s what I was doing. My ego had kicked in, I became rigid of thought. Maybe it’s got some tie-in with my loathing of bullies, or maybe my tolerances were low because I’ve had a lot of poor health and fatigue of late. 

But the wise thing to do there, was just to step away, there are no trophies or prizes for getting any further involved in that dynamic. True friends, good friends, stab you in the front. They’ll tell you when you’re behaving in a way that’s below your own standards, they’ll remind you of yourself. I think, as a friend, one of the most important things to do is to call bullshit. If you’re embarking on a path that’s potentially destructive, they’ll then say to you, without judgement, “Really? Is that really what your plan for your life is just now?” and also totally take the piss out of you and make you laugh at yourself for being silly. Because they know what it’s like to let their tail wag them too. 

We all get a little bit entrenched or involved when the emotions are up, a kind of monkey mind kicks in. We start thinking that life is a serious thing. And it’s not yaknow. Friends will remind you, it’s often just a comedy sketch, we just don’t always get the joke, we forget that we should just laugh, not make it more serious than what it is. I’m going to try harder not to let the tail wag the dog. 

Thanks for the lesson mate.