New essay at Medium

Over at Medium, I wrote about my ambivalent relationship with my cat Scout, and how I came to terms with it:

Life is like a box of chocolates, Forrest Gump once said. You never know what you’re gonna get. We often think we deserve accolades for mere intentions: for opening our doors to abandoned pets, for signing on to raise children for 18 (or sometimes 25 or 30) years of our lives. But what happens when something goes wrong, when we get a seemingly spoiled chocolate, or one to which we’re allergic? How we deal with unmet expectations is the mettle of who we are, not our good intentions. And we can never know who we are until we encounter a situation in which we are forced confront the existence of our lesser selves, the ones who want to throw in the towel, pout, be angry at life’s unfairness, and not follow through on our commitments.

To read more, go here.