THE FIRST TREAT
Day 1 — My brain gave me a treat.
MON
Something happened today.
I had been noticing something strange. Not strange in the supernatural sense. Nothing glowed. No choir descended from the ceiling. I did not suddenly understand the universe while standing in a beam of celestial light.
It was much more ordinary than that. I would do something—notice something, solve a small problem, make a kinder choice, follow a bit of curiosity—and there would be this tiny internal reward. A little click of satisfaction. A small pleasure. Not fireworks.
More like the quiet feeling of, Yes. That was good. And one day I compared those little rewards to giving a dog a treat. The phrase made me laugh. Doggy treats. The human brain handing itself a little biscuit. At first it was just funny. That was probably why I liked it.
I have never had much interest in solemn wisdom delivered from a mountaintop. If an idea cannot survive a little laughter, I am suspicious of it.
But then the joke opened. A doggy treat is not simply a snack. It is reinforcement. You ask the dog to sit. The dog sits. Treat. You are saying, in the most direct possible language: That. Do more of that. And suddenly the silly phrase became almost embarrassingly accurate.
When I noticed reality instead of panicking about it, there was a small reward. When I followed a clue instead of deciding in advance what it meant, there was a reward. When I did something kind that was not merely comfortable, there was a reward.
When I solved a small practical problem instead of turning it into evidence that the entire day was going to hell, there was a reward. That. Do more of that. I had stumbled into something that felt less like a theory than a practice.
A whole lot of little experiences of practical wisdom. That wording matters to me. I do not want to turn life into a system where every good behavior earns a biscuit. The moment you make doggy treats into a quota, you have ruined the dog park.
The treats are not a productivity scheme. They are things you notice. They are little moments when some part of you recognizes that you have moved a fraction closer to reality, kindness, courage, curiosity, honesty, or simply being awake to your own life.
The more I noticed them, the more I began to see how many I had missed. I had spent years looking for the big answer. The breakthrough. The thing that would finally explain everything. Meanwhile, life had been scattering biscuits all over the floor.
The funny part is that the title sounded almost too silly to take seriously. Doggie Treats. Then we realized it was structurally accurate. I laughed at that phrase too. Structurally accurate. Who would ever expect those words to be applied to something called Doggie Treats?
But there it was. The title did not announce itself as profound. It wagged its tail first.
I think that is part of why I trust it. There is a lot of wisdom that arrives wearing a suit and tie and tells you how important it is. This arrived scratching at the back door.
