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Popular humorist David Sedaris gives readers plenty to think about in his 2000 essay entitled, “The Youth in Asia,” an obvious play on a common procedure done in veterinary offices throughout the world. In this essay, Sedaris recounts a series of pet dogs his family procured over the course of many years beginning with two collies named Rastus and Duchess. After Rastus had taken off and Duchess had died, Sedaris’ father came home with a German shepherd puppy who was given the name of Madchen. When Madchen was hit and killed by a car, the puppy who replaced her was given the name Madchen Two. No originality there. It was as if the new pet was a duplicate of the former. Later in the essay, Sedaris’ mother dies, and the author entertains the idea of his father coming home with a new wife. His mother’s name was Sharon. His dad would replace her with Sharon Two. A duplicate, like the dog.
On its surface, the essay is a tickler. Many of us have seen pets come and go, and it is certainly understandable why someone might be tempted to keep a name. Maybe it is just lazy thinking. Or maybe there is something more profound to be said. Sedaris seems to be marking time by their succession of pets, and in doing so, he is pointing to how human beings oftentimes cope with the things we cannot change, namely the passing of time and death. They are unavoidable. We all must face the music.
Giving a puppy the same name as the previous dog, therefore, seems to be a way to deny reality. It is an act of escapism. It is as if to say, Those years in the past, those years marked by the existence of a particular dog, those years I can never get back ... the very idea is too much to bear. I do not want to grow old. I do not want to die. Therefore, I will try to recreate a moment by reusing a name, recycling an era, small, though it may be but, in the end, precious. So very precious.
Sedaris’ essay, in the end, is about how some of us deal with the passing of time – how some of us do our very best to hold onto past joys, past moments when the sun was out and there was a sweet, pleasant breeze. We can all relate to this. Nostalgia grips us all from time to time. But if Sedaris, in his own clever way, is issuing a challenge, how might that challenge be characterized?
In my own life, I have been guilty on many occasions of trying to preserve some joy, and it took me quite some time to understand that context matters. As an undergraduate, for example, I performed in a play every semester. I tried to do this when I went on to graduate school, but it did not feel right. It did not work. So I did something else. And after I got my first job and moved away, I again tried to recreate that moment I had in graduate school, but just as before, it did not feel right. It did not work, either. The context changed. Context is always changing. That, in part, is one of the conditions of existence. And it gets even more complicated when we recognize that other individuals are oftentimes the largest part of the contexts we inhabit. Something that felt right then does not feel right now because those who inhabit our orbit are different. They cannot assume the names of those in the past. That would be laughable. That is why, perhaps, Sedaris’ essay does make readers laugh. It taps into the absurdity of believing that some moments can be recreated, resurrected, even, by our own efforts. They cannot. We do not have that power. And it is foolish to think otherwise.
The lesson, though, is not harsh or mean. There is an invitation to be kind to ourselves. We all have cherished memories, but like the person ascending the ladder, we should not look down. We have already pushed up from previous rungs. The key to happiness is to keep reaching for the rungs above us. We never know how we might be pleasantly surprised.
