An Ill-mannered Dog

Joo-hyung, who had taken Mola to the park, told me, ¡°Dad, I couldn¡¯t stay longer at the dog park because since Mola was so ill-mannered.¡± According to him, when he let go of the dog so that she could play with the other dogs, she instead proceeded to follow him to the picnic bench where he was sitting, and jumped up unto the table, and tried to lick the others¡¯ faces and acted so carefree about it, without even listening to the order to come down. The other people there just laughed and told him about how cute she was, he felt so embarrassed that he hurriedly came back home.

The whole backyard, inside the fences of our house, is the territory of Mola. It is her daily routine to get on the picnic bench, whenever she gets bored of guarding our house, and start barking at the elementary kids beyond the fence. When given food, she holds it with her mouth, gets on the table, and eats slowly. Naturally, all the benches that come into her sight are her spot. It serves her right to be called an ill-mannered dog.

I¡¯ve never heard people call me ¡°an ill-mannered kid¡± as I grew up. I do not remember ever calling someone else ill-mannered, but this expression is used quite often. Vaguely assuming that it is used for swearing or rebuking, I haven¡¯t really thought deeply enough about it. There are no special reasons as to why I came to ponder this, but all of a sudden I could see a new aspect on it.

Usually when this word is used for rebuking or being scolded, someone must have done something wrong or bad. But the focus of rebuking is not on the wrongdoings, but rather on the lack of a good habit to distinguish and cope with the bad thing. When I think about this issue, while keeping this in mind, a habit is not made overnight but it is something that is formed through repetitive practice, and it is not an easy thing. In other words, if you do not have good habits, if you act naturally as you always have you may be led in the wrong way and hear people calling you ¡°ill-mannered¡¦¡± frequently. I can agree to the Korean saying, ¡°Old habits die hard.¡±   

We learn the skills to cope with a certain situation as we live. However, unfortunately, since there are so many situations we humans learn, our lives end while repeating things we shouldn¡¯t do. Laws also exist to punish justly when we commit wrongdoings. Thus even if we try to learn from our mistakes there is not enough time to learn all of them or time to distinguish bad things that keep happening. Let¡¯s solve it as we trace back and reflect on this life which is relative and so full of contradictions.   

Rather than learning things one by one we shouldn¡¯t do from the perspective of law, culture, and the Bible, it would be better to learn things correctly in the first place. And if we form right habits, by putting things into practice continuously, we can do what we should do first instead of pursuing things we shouldn¡¯t do no matter the circumstances we face.

The Bible also teaches us what not to do in many ways. Deuteronomy, in the Old Testament, instructs us to avoid these or those deeds or not to eat certain things, particularly my favorite seafood (crap, tuna, mackerel, mackerel pike, shrimp, etc) and wild boar. It is better to starve. The Ten Commandments that summarized all of these laws tells us not to look at beautiful women, or to have greed for a nice car, a big house, or look after one¡¯s own interest by lying. How can we really live if we have to follow all these? But the New Testament, which was recorded after Jesus came, replaced all of these ¡°dos and don¡¯ts¡± with a very simple and few good habits to remember. A good example among them is ¡°Love your God and neighbor.¡± When one understands these simple commands, and puts them into practice until they become his own habits, he can get rid of all the bad things that the Bible forbids.

If I had trained Mola in certain simple rules like sit, wait, come, stay, etc, she wouldn¡¯t become an ¡°ill-mannered dog¡± in front of others. I feel uncomfortable since she hasn¡¯t formed those good habits. Because of that, whenever I go out, I have to keep her on a leash and keep saying ¡°no¡± whenever she is scolded. Realizing that we humans would never be called ¡°ill-mannered¡± if we just have a few good habits, and my kids and I just form the habit of practicing love for at least God and our neighbors.