Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
I went to check the progress of renovation work being done to one of my properties today. I stop by at least once a week and, each time see a different set of contractors working on the house, this being a full roof to basement re-do. Today the dry wall/plaster crew was there. I saw the dog, (in the photo above), as I parked my car. Smiling, I got out of my car and waited for him to be a dog and bark and come over to me and make sure I belonged and/or had any right to come on his property.
I talked to him, (no matter what the breed, how big and ferocious they might be), I always start my conversations with, “Puppy dog! what a good-looking doggie you are!” [funny, isn’t it? a person’s sense of self-consciousness, when it comes to behavior that might be regarded as silly or inappropriate, is totally tied to how much that person enjoys whatever the reason is…for…acting silly. It didn’t matter if anyone was watching this real estate broker get out of his car and ignoring everything, have an out loud conversation with the approaching dog].
In any event, we met and he was a friendly dog. I started walking towards the house, (“come on! lets go see the house!”). He was a German Shepherd, probably 6 or 7 years of age, and I immediately noticed the slant of his hindquarters. (It’s my opinion that the most monstrous form of animal abuse I can think of is the breeding of dogs to match some person or breeder organization or show dog judges. The words of this conformance standards can be seen in some German Shepherds. My guard dog today being one them.)
My new friend and I walked towards the front door. As we stepped up onto the raised brick walk leading to the front door, he fell. He half-fell. His rear legs simply did not negotiate the step-up on to the walk.
I turned and looked at him. He looked at me with an expression that… represents what makes dogs so amazing. It was a look that said, ‘hey, sorry. legs gave out. Go on without me, I’ll be alright…just have to get back up.’
I felt sorrow for him. I didn’t ‘feel sorry for him‘, I felt sorrow.
What an awful feeling. My stomach fell, trying to pull my eyes into my throat.
I waited. He got up, without undue distress, clearly he was used to this happening. Once he was back on all fours, I actually said, in all sincerity and seriousness, “hey you should go back to your post, I’ll just go in myself’…. (yes, I said this out loud ), and he did just that.
What does this have to do with self-improvement and the Wakefield Doctrine?
You will read in these pages the statement, ‘…the Wakefield Doctrine is a tool to help you better understand the people in your life‘. This is a true statement. It is also a tool to better understand yourself. Which, when you think about it, can be a much more difficult task than:
- understanding why your husband insists on using a sharpie to make outlines of the tools that he hangs in the shed or
- your daughter who totally thinks that her expression of her individuality (purple hair, nose rings and combat boots) should not go against her in the upcoming job interview.
Using the Wakefield Doctrine allows me a slightly different perspective on myself. Which, given that I am a clark, is at once more difficult and more valuable. We all, (clarks, scotts and rogers), have blind spots.* And, if you’re after improving on the way you relate yourself to the world around you, then you had better find a way to see into that area. There might be treasures there.
The biggest blind spot for those of us who grew up and live in the personal reality of the Outsider, is emotion. Not that we don’t have or feel emotion. It’s just that we’re not always on the best of terms. (New Readers? If you read and learn the worldviews as well as some, people like zoe and Kristi and Val…. then, had you heard a person utter that last sentence, (“It’s just that we’re not always on the best of terms’), you would be totally thinking, ‘probable clark‘. lol
But I felt the raw emotion today. Just for a second. And I knew that it, (the emotion), was, as Castaneda might have said, ‘a thing of power’. It was an indication that there are parts of me that I do not know very well and that, if I am to self-improve myself, I will need to come to know better.
….but, it was so sad.
But hey, no one said it would be easy. In fact, most people will say, ‘if you want to change for the better, there is a price to pay and it’s always going to be almost more than you’re willing to pay.’
* I will not go into how insufficient the term ‘blindspot’ is in this context. It is. Maybe the next Post.
About clarkscottroger
wow… did you plan on such a moving post on a day when there would be few to witness it ya stinking Clark! hahahahaha! Just kidding…. it is a splendidly moving post though. I totally feel for that man (the dog) and you in it.
lol ( I know that! )
no…but then this is one of those posts! it happened to me the words were simply my struggle (and effort) to communicate what I thought/felt happened. And, as to timing, there is a sense of urgency (for me) with these types of posts… the echoes fade quickly and the power of the moment passes…
(I really hate those fuckin AKC ‘this is how we think German Shepherds look the best’… surely this is an example of the worst of all human conceits and it’s the animals that suffer. hell! they’re fricken born that way! effectively crippled (or nearly so, at least when still young)… (and yes, I can hear the z-shrink sitting back and say, “ach! zat is so very sad, but what is it that is really bothering you zo much?”
lol
I think whats really bothering you is humanity’s ability to eff up even the most perfect of beings for the sake of fulfilling their own sense of narcissism. Or maybe its a mommy issue. Who knows? Lol.
I just went back to look at him… what an awareness in those eyes eh? Beautiful face! I cant believe I am frist at this hour… ah summer holidays.
Price. There is ALWAYS a price.
And…love this doggie! And I can see the tugs on the heartstrings. Dogs just do that, you know?
yeah… and, as I hoped to get across in the post, he didn’t have a problem with the deformity that he was born with and that, with increasing age, was taking it’s toll… I was having the problem with the …to stay with your metaphor (or maybe that’s allegory?) the snapping back of heartstrings… so, yeah I knew that… but there are times like today where it is not to be ignored
“And, if you’re after improving on the way you relate yourself to the world around you, then you had better find a way to see into that area. There might be treasures there.”
What a clark I am! At once I thought “treasures”? Really? You f’in crazy? Call it for what it is – it’s all the (sorry got to use it) fucked up shit that comes with being a clark. After my initial instant reaction….I boomeranged back and read it again, in a more open, softer, gentler….nope. Still not seeing the “treasures”!
But I will say this: the Doctrine is invaluable (to me) as a tool to understand others. The flip side is once you get a handle on that, then your (my) own behavior can’t not become different. And when you start to catch on to rogers baiting you (good naturedly or not) or not getting scared when the scott lets loose at work (it will blow over pretty quickly) or notice clarks who stumble and stammer among their own (they probably think the other person is way smarter, more talented, more everything then them) you can’t help but notice that somehow, life has gotten a little easier for knowing the Doctrine.
Yeah, yeah, this comment’s too long. I’m in a “mood”. Whatev. I’m totally on board with the self-improvement thing. And no 2 ways around it. There is a price to pay. You know it, I know it, Cyndi knows it…yo Ivy! I know you know it too. Self improvement or self evolution, as I prefer to call it, requires not only looking for those “treasures” but the willingness to face the “awful things” as well.
P.S. No one has a stronger stomach lining than a clark :D
P.S.S I’d better come back in another comment to talk about the “emotion” thing :)
and it’s the very reality that we are living in that (knows) the way to get us to avoid paying the price…cloak it in ‘un-defined’ fear. The price (of self-improvement) is always dear… for scotts and for rogers as well. Perhaps we should look at them and, but all we’ll see is a reflection of our ownselfs. (At least in terms of coming up against something that makes most of them say, ‘no way!, it ain’t worth it!’
Deep, Clark. Very deep for a holiday.
I am not much into the dog world. I didn’t know that the breeding done for shows and such was so bad for the dogs. Ugh. People really know how to mess with the perfect, natural order of things.
Self-improvement most certainly comes with difficulty. In order to learn patience, your patience must be tested. It’s quite annoying, actually. :)
Christine
I’m not so much into the dog world, except when it comes to German Shepherds and even then, it’s only becoming aware of the notion of breeding dogs ‘to purpose’. (My understanding) is that there is only one dog and all the variation are because someone wanted truffles with their breakfast of needed to get the ducks out of the water. I would hazard that some of this shaping is benign, but the conformance standard (at least at one time) for shepherds was so extreme as to make them unstable.
This being the Wakefield Doctrine, the Everything Rule would hold that for scotts ‘the price’ is similar but different. I would hazard that the ‘always almost too high price’ for scotts manifests as being stuck inside your own head… not finding certainty in anything you can think of…. it would surely be as terrible an experience as the un-controlled emotion is to a clark
Sad. I don’t have much more to say, and yet there is lots more that could be said. (Writing down coherent comments sometimes takes more time than I have available.) Thought-provoking post.
I know what you mean (about ‘sad’ and about ‘takes more time than available’), I’m always having trouble writing comments…takes me about 15 or 20 minutes per, it seems.