by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

I ride my bicycle every afternoon. It gets me out of the house and gets my heart pumping. Pedaling hard on flat ground is fun, but going up the hill, the same hill three times, is tortuous; first up Prolongación de Aldama then along Las Moras, then looping down and up through Colonia Guadiana twice.

Going down through Guadiana on Gorrion takes me by a wide carport gate, a grate with bars spaced a handbreadth apart. On the other side, when there is not a car, there is a German Shepherd, faithfully guarding the house.

Aligned with the top end of the carport, there is a speed bump that stretches almost the whole way across the road. With my downhill speed, the only alternative to going over the bump and launching myself into the air, is to veer to the side of the road and thread my course through that gap, keeping, like the rain, to the flat road there.

It's a simple enough maneuver, except that my passing so close to the grate provokes the dog, who is lying down on the other side, to bark and charge.

This isn't so bad on my first pass because I am largely past before the dog can spring into action. He gets to his feet and growls quickly enough, but I've already sailed past before he can fully react. The problem happens on my second pass.

No dummy, he's learned that I am coming again. When I've summited Potranca and am coming again down Gorrion, he's on his feet, ready for me.

I know he's behind bars. I'm expecting him to bark. But, no matter how prepared I am, no matter how I've steeled myself for the moment, I'm always shocked by it. Having this large dog bark and lunge at me, even from the other side of the grate, even only for less than one second, gets my adrenaline going. His instinct is to guard his home turf. My instinct is fight or flight.

But I'm no dummy, either. I've gotten proactive. Now before I veer close, before I am even in his line of sight, I make a friendly kissing noise, sucking air in between my pursed lips, the same noise I make when it's tuna time for my cat. This friendly messaging, made on my first pass, lets him know I'm coming. It's usually enough to prevent him from reacting, or, at least, from reacting with so much hostility.

The really interesting thing is that, even those times when he does react with full hostility, lunging and barking ferociously, my blowing him kisses, stops me from reacting to his attack. I don't have a hormonal response. There's no adrenaline, no fight or flight response.

You don't have to be Aesop to find the moral here. I went from being a victim of circumstances to being the master of my destiny just by being friendly. It seems kind of basic writing it down here, but I'm ashamed to tell you how many bike rides it took me to figure it out.

Trying a different approach, as the psalmist says, "sing[ing] a new song," often enough brings different results. According to Zen, the enlightened mind does not react in kind. Free from constraints the master redefines the situation.

Years ago, I was out to dinner with a friend and a number of people I didn't know. One of these new acquaintances, who was new in town from the States, remarked about some tension he felt emanating towards him from Mexicans. "When?" I asked, suspending my appetizer. "Walking down back streets," he replied. I responded, perhaps a bit too animatedly, "Have you tried saying 'Buenos días' or 'Buenas tardes'? Mexicans greet each other and they want to greet you, too, but they don't know if you're just another rude gringo, who won't return their greeting. When you say hello, the world changes."

Two and a half thousand years ago, the rabbi's counseled, "Be the first to greet your fellow." That's still good advice.

Of course, you can't please everybody. No matter how enlightened my approach, sometimes the dog is going to bark. But now when he does, I just keep rolling merrily along.

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