Greyhounds: A Fable
My father was an abusive alcoholic, and those were his best traits. Some of the time, he’d try to counsel me, and it apparently worked…
Greyhounds That Caught the Lure: A Fable
My father was an abusive alcoholic, and those were his best traits. Some of the time, he’d try to counsel me, and it apparently worked because a lot of the lessons have stuck. One day I found myself writing to my stepdaughter about the story he’d tell me of the greyhounds that caught the rabbit lure.
As my father told it, once the racing greyhounds caught that lure and realized that it wasn’t really a rabbit at all, just a bit of fur taped to a track, they completely lost interest in the race and weren’t able to ever race again. The reason I told this story is that it seemed to speak to me about my struggles within the corporate life. I saw myself in those greyhounds, because although I had ‘caught the rabbit’ and realized that all of the corporation’s vision statements and PR was bullshit — I still had to run the race.
I believed that story for a really long time. Part of my mid life crisis has been a deep philosophical reevaluation of why I do the things that I do. I’ve been questioning the things I think or take as foundational concepts, to see if they stand up under closer scrutiny. So, I looked up video evidence of what happens when greyhounds catch the rabbits they chase. Ends up, it’s a greyhound party, cause THEY CAUGHT IT!
Moral: Dogs are awesome and my dad was a liar.