your heart is always open with your pet
Your beloved animal companion doesn’t just love and accept you unconditionally—they also allow you to love and accept them in return. This reciprocal exchange is incredibly important within the context of a warm, intimate relationship, and is necessary for starting a relationship to begin with.
Think of it this way: in any relationship—whether it’s between humans or more-than-humans—there are two bodies (or fields of energy). The first body is you, and the second body is the other being. But there’s also a third body, which is what psychotherapist Francis Weller calls the “soul of the relationship.” Here is where the two of you overlap, the invisible container through which you connect with each other, that moves with you, and holds everything ever exchanged between you. The third body is the energetic field that allows you to reach each other, and it’s built and sustained by intimacy and affection.
If you’re paying attention in your relationships, you can intuitively feel when this space is warm and alive versus when it’s gone cold, dead or stagnant. Human-to-human relationships are exceedingly complex and, sadly, often conditional, and so the third body can experience wild fluctuations over time. Some third bodies can withstand a significant amount of damage and be repaired with genuine amends, while some never recover.
With every careless word, every perceived hurt, every betrayal from a loved one, your tender heart can shut down, close itself off from the other person. A closed heart carries a grave consequence, though: in trying to protect yourself from further emotional injury, you’re not only unable to offer love and affection, but also unable to receive it.
In short, the health of a third body is directly linked to your ability to keep your heart open.
“In my mother tongue of Tibetan, we use the word tsewa [for love/tenderness]. The tender, open heart of tsewa is an infinitely malleable resource. It expresses itself as kindness, compassion, vicarious joy, generosity, tolerance, mental clarity, courage, resilience, unshakeable cheerfulness, and in many other internal ways. It also manifests outwardly in our positive actions. Everything we do for the benefit of others, or for the sake of opening our own hearts, comes from this fundamental quality of tsewa. In this way, tsewa is the source of all goodness in the world.”
When it comes to your relationship with your beyond-human best friend, not much can be said beyond what it is you do when you’re with them and how you feel when you’re together. This relationship defies words—when you’re with your pet, you’re busy enjoying being with them; you don’t sit around analyzing your relationship, wondering what they meant when they decided to get off your lap, or reflecting on past hurts (if those even exist).
Your relationship with them is active, present—not stuck in your head or relating to them only as a mental concept. This lack of complexity reveals a singular purity to the soul of your relationship: with your pet, you don’t have any baggage or wonder where you stand. You get to delight in the relationship for its own sake. You take each other as you are.
With your darling little one, you’re able to express yourself fully and freely with no judgment—with zero worries about appearing needy, or messy, or overly sensitive, or just plain weird. You soften. You let your guard down. You let your heart open to reveal who you really are, at your core. You access the place within yourself that’s pure love, the place you so rarely get to experience otherwise. Animals bring us back to reality, to presence, to the eternal now.
Every pat and scratch, every hug, every cuddle, every sandpapery or slobbery kiss, every walk together, every game, every playful nip, every smile and laugh elicited, every tear shed, every nose boop and forehead bump and shoulder perch—every single one of these affectionate acts are forever part of the third body between you and your baby.
This is one of the biggest reasons why your unique bond runs so deep, and thus why your grief can be so acute: in your relationship with your pet, your hearts have never been closed to each other. Not once. Not for a single second. And so the third body is always kept warm and very much alive. This may be the only kind of relationship where this is true, and why it plays such an important role in your life.
It turns out it’s your animal companion who helps keep your heart from shutting down permanently, who teaches you what’s possible in a relationship, who embodies what love can be. They teach you how to be better; they show you what it looks like to share yourself, unafraid and unapologetic.
Through your pet, you have immediate access to your greatest resource: your open, loving heart. And through your pet, you learn what it means to risk yourself, to live at the tender edge of vulnerability, and to open yourself to life and to the world all around you.
I Will Not Die an Unlived Life
I will not die an unlived life
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
– Dawna Markova.
Practice keeping your heart open with us.
