The Canine Guru’s Guide to Dropping The Ball

Inca is an odd choice for a guru, it must be said – poor communication skills, will sample roadkill and urinates in public, but he is wise in the ways of living a contented life, so I asked friends to suggest philosophical conundrums that the dog might tackle on their behalf.

One question led to much befuddlement: “When should you drop the ball?” 

Well, according to the rules of our competitive world, never, damn it! In order to be a winner in the Game of Life, you have to pick up (or if you’re lucky, catch) the ball and run with it until the full-time whistle blows and you leave the Playing Field of Existence. What good is a dropped ball? None whatsoever…Or is it? If you drop the ball you’re currently holding, you may catch another, entirely better one, or you may never find a replacement. That’s the gamble.

The etymology of the idiom dates back to the early 1940’s, when folks gathered en masse to share in the mutual anxiety of watching men tackle each other over a flying leather orb. It is inherently masculine and therefore synonymous with power and the unacceptable concept of making mistakes. 

“Hey, Brad, the ball is in your court.” 

“I can’t do anything about that, Mitch, I’m juggling too many balls here.” 

“Well, there’s a lot riding on this account, don’t drop the ball on this one. You don’t want to get sidelined.”

(N.B.: No females were used in this imaginary conversation between 1950’s American ad men, for obvious reasons.)

Is there ever a time when we should drop the ball? First, we need to establish what the ball is. Let’s call it Life: our careers, our aspirations, our relationships.  

The Career Ball is often bouncy and hard to keep hold of. Inca, if he could speak human, would tell you that running with an orange rubber sphere wedge between his teeth is his career, nay, his raison d’être. He has other important jobs of course, such as barking and eating, but not dropping the ball while travelling at speed is his area of expertise. He spent the first two years of his existence telling the ball who was boss and fighting dogs twice his size over it. Once in his mouth, he runs until dehydrated. So dedicated is he, that at times he notices little else. On walks, the kids will point out a particularly fragrant bush or Nellie, his female doppelgänger, trotting towards him with delight in her eyes, but nothing else matters except the ball. Displaying all the characteristics of a workaholic, he barks, “Woman! This is what I do! No canine can be relied upon to do it better!” 

Then came the fateful ‘balls-up’ incident. It was one of those winter mornings when the concrete sky looks low enough to crush you. Our fingers numb, no one – except the dog – wanted to be on a family walk. My son, expressing his annoyance at being forced to retreat from an online battle, threw the ball with a little too much force and caught on a wind gust, it flew high before almost taking out a seagull as it dropped into the green murk of the English Channel. For a while we stood there, dumbfounded, even Inca was lost for barks. But when he realised his life’s work was about to begin a one-way journey to Dover, he gave chase. He howled into the angry waves, swam as far out as he could, but the ball eluded him, swallowed too soon into the depths. The guru, having not yet come to his zen-like senses, was in a frenzy, struggling to stay afloat in the furious sea. Left with no choice, I went in after him – fully clothed. When he and I emerged, all chattering teeth and soaked fur and jeans, my language was as blue as my lips. 

“He’ll be traumatised for life!” I yelled, as Inca bent over an aptly named dogfish, sleeping forever on the pebbles. He sniffed twice, shook his coat all over my trainers and galloped off with the deceased poisson in his mouth. The next day, my son bought him an orange frisbee and the CEO of all things colourful and round hasn’t looked back. 

Our identities are bound up in the Career Balls we carry, but when they get dropped, either on purpose or by accident, it can actually be a blessing. Arianna (of Huffington Post fame) said in an interview that after her now famous collapse, a doctor told her, “There’s nothing wrong with you and there’s everything wrong with you. You are suffering from civilization’s disease – burnout.” And now all she talk about it how sometimes you really do have to drop the ball, for the sake of those you love, but mainly for yourself. 

A young woman I know chose a career in nursing and found herself on the front line of the pandemic. Imagine working in A&E in a London hospital during Covid, whilst still in your twenties? There is no financial reward for risking her life each day but there is constant pressure to keep running with the ball. She isn’t just a nurse, she is also an artist and a brilliant one at that, but there has been little talk of creativity of late. When I saw her recently, she looked changed (as you might expect), tired out by life. Is there a sadder sight than emotional exhaustion in a young person’s eyes?

She told me she was going to make a change and, for the time being at least, do something else with her life. She’s young and that makes her brave, but you don’t have to be young to be courageous. If you are doing something that makes you feel tired before you get up in the morning, don’t just drop the ball, hurl it out the bedroom window. I am not saying abandon your responsibilities but make plans to change your situation somehow, because your first responsibility is to yourself and you can’t help anyone if you are burnt out.

Which brings me to Inca’s secret weapon – sleep. He doesn’t know about tiredness, because he spends a substantial amount of time snoring. Something I think Miss Huffington and Tiffany Dufu, author of Drop The Ball: Achieving More By Doing Less, would approve of. All the experts agree that if you are beginning to feel like you are about to drop the ball, get more sleep. This applies to more than just paying careers; there are others, such as the hardest job in the world, the one that goes without annual bonuses: parenting. 

Sleep is most important in the early months of becoming a parent, and that goes for both mother and father. It is the difference between a good experience and post-natal meltdown or divorce. If you are lucky, you have a partner or relative who helps, but even then, the pressure to pick up the ball and carry on as if another human being hasn’t just exited your body and is relying on you for its very survival, is extraordinary. In Japan the tradition of postpartum confinement (Satogaeri Shussan) states that a new mother must stay indoors with her baby and her own mother for a minimum of a month, while she heals and bonds with her newborn. This is not always ideal – especially if your mother is a chain-smoking wino who likes to watch Sky News all day and tell you, “Everything’s a disaster,” – but that month gives the uterus time to move back into its original position, ensures bonding and, essentially, gives you time to sleep. My ex-husband and I did something similar with our first born, but when it came to the second, I was in a voice-over booth talking about Max Factor mascara less than a week after his birth. It didn’t affect him too much because I was lucky enough to be able to have him strapped to my chest like a limpet, but it definitely affected me.   

The Aspiration Ball is one ball you should never drop, unless it is getting in the way of your survival, such as causing crippling debt, and even then, only put it down in order to regroup. Your Aspiration Ball should be balanced on the top of your head, helping you walk tall when everything else conspires to hunch your shoulders, but often it’s the first one we drop in our rush to enter the big league of adulthood. 

It gets dropped on the Field because we’re all too busy trying to keep up with the other runners, who aren’t so much playing as pounding the earth, and you cannot see your ball for the knee-high day-to-day grass that’s grown up. On the ground are other discarded Aspiration balls. You see people glance down as they trip over them, sometimes swearing at the inconvenience caused. Over time, these balls develop moss, lose their shine, so that it is hard to distinguish one from another. Occasionally, we glimpse someone who has bounded back and picked theirs up. It glows in their hands; they seem so still. You may even run over to them and ask if you can hold it and they let you because, even if we get exactly what we want, it is lonely to carry these things alone. You will thrive for a time like this, particularly if their ball manifests itself into something tangible (just ask Hilary Clinton), but if you abandon your own ball, you will always feel like something is missing. 

For a dog so obsessed with his, Inca can be somewhat stupid when it comes to finding the ball – or so it seems. I’ll stand over him and say, “It’s there, right in front of you.” He’ll sniff like a highly trained police dog that has found a large consignment of cocaine on my person, on the pebbles, on a passer-by, but he’ll still not see his bloody ball, right at his feet. Then he’ll get distracted by a feather or a leaf before happily bounding back to grab the thing he knew was there all along. He tricks me and he tricks his ball. The same can be said for your aspirations. If you step away from them because you must (work, children etc) and appear to pay them no mind for a while, your ball will go into a kind of hibernation, but you can always go back and pounce on it.

I’ve wanted to be a writer from the day my primary school teacher told me I was dyslexic.

“What a wonderful word, how do you spell it?” I asked. 

My first short story was about a woman who has an affair with her pathologist. Yes, you read that correctly, I was nine and meant to write psychiatrist (precocious little beast). Somehow my parents managed to keep a straight face as, during one of their resplendent dinner parties, I read my romantic tale to the guests. They were expecting to hear about Tricksy the bunny, not “Christelle, who was begging to be kissed by Robert, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.” A man with a big beard coughed into his port. Undeterred, I continued: “Even though she smelt of candyfloss and Mars Bar chocolate, he knew it was wrong to touch those lips.” A sequined woman spat wine, extinguishing a candelabra. 

Not to be put off by this critical encounter, I pushed on and somehow got a degree. As I stood up to collect my scroll, I dropped my Aspiration Ball in a York Minster pew. It was almost two decades before I noticed it in the grass again and now it bounces on my head each morning like a demented child. It is unlikely my passion will sustain us financially, but just having reclaimed my ball from the Field, of having brushed the dirt and other people’s footprints off, is enough. The great thing about our Aspiration Balls is they’re usually tiny. If needs be, hold it between your fingers, hidden, until you are ready to share it with the world. 

There is a simple explanation as to why people don’t follow their dreams more. Without wanting to sound like a Students’ Uni rep, the answer lies in economics. Capitalism is a massive lawnmower coming up behind the runners on the Field, making us pick up the pace just to stay alive. Islam has an interesting attitude towards banking, namely the charging of interest (Riba) on loans. It is against the principle of ‘fair distribution’ because it increases inequality, where the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. It’s perhaps going a little far to describe charging interest as, ‘waging war against God and his messenger’ (are you listening NatWest?) but I would like to see the demise of those payday loan companies. Inca would agree with me, if he knew what money was.

The Relationship Ball is the trickiest one of all to carry. It doesn’t matter if it is familial, friendly or romantic, the same principle applies: if you have a sodding great ball in your mouth, communication is going to be difficult. I have seen Inca attempt to have a conversation with a ball jammed between his teeth. The other dogs in the group cock their heads, eager to chat but eventually one will bark, “I don’t understand you, mate.” Inca, resolute, won’t drop the thing until it’s too late and all he can do is watch as the other dogs trot off, leaving him mute and alone. 

It’s heartbreaking  to see a  relationship die because the people involved are gagged by their own balls. That doesn’t sound right at all, but you know what I mean – our belief that we are justified, or wronged, or hurt. Our righteousness stays stuck, so we can’t swallow or take responsibility for at least part of it and say, “Sorry.”

Sometimes the ball just gets too heavy to hold, or you become distracted and drop it, leaving it for someone else to take. Upon realising this, you might think your world will collapse like so much dark matter, but it won’t. 

The other day, I was walking in an idyllic spot with Inca and along came a very friendly white piece of fluff. She was too glorious. Inca dropped his ball in greeting. Before he could take a breath, the little minx grabbed his property and ran off with it. He looked up at me as if to say, ‘now what?’ Well, it was obvious, we would go after it. 

“You’ll never get it back now,” the owner cackled. 

“I’m sorry?” 

It was a £10 lump of rubber that lit up in the dark, I most certainly was going to get it back. “You can chase her as much as you like, she’ll just outrun you.” 

Inca and I exchanged confused glances. The witch appeared to find this theft downright hilarious. We did not believe her assurance that his ‘precious’ was gone for good, lost in the jaws of another, but after almost an hour of making complete fools of ourselves, trying to corral the twisty little mutt, we finally admitted defeat and agreed to take an old, slobber-covered tennis ball in trade. We watched the hound dance off triumphantly, having stolen Inca’s heart. I offered condolences but something odd happened, he appeared to be enthralled by this tatty object. It was older, less shiny and hardly bounced, but for days it was all he cared for. He even took it to bed with him. It’s not quite Shakespeare, but it gives me hope that there is life after the shiny and buff days of our youth.  

So there you have it – Inca and I believe that none of us head to the Changing Rooms Void with anything between our palms, so all this worry about balls, is just that. Inca would advise you to drop those that stop you communicating, striving or keep you awake at night, but go find that ball you never really lost and hold onto it until the full-time whistle on the game.