I got an email today from a lovely writer, Kim Childs, who had interviewed me for a story she wrote in Awakening World magazine about falling in love with your life. Beneath her email signature was this quotation: “Even after all this time, the sun never says to the Earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that: it lights the whole world. ~Hafiz“

That spoke to me when I read it because I am at this very moment in the presence of someone I love with no questions asked: my dog Aspen. Well, technically she belongs to Adair, my daughter, and even more technically to Adair and her husband, Nick, since Aspen has lived with them since their marriage, four years ago yesterday. I’m only dog-sitting for a couple of days. But I found Aspen on the street back in the fall of 1994, a skinny young dog (Doberman? Chocolate lab? Pointer?) who’d had a litter of pups already. It happened that that particular day I’d been to the store and had cat food in the car. One lid popped on one tiny can, and Aspen was my best bud.

For my daughter, then eleven, it was love at first sight. We ran ads and put up signs but nobody claimed this short-haired, long-nosed package of love and energy. I wasn’t ready for a dog (we had four cats; I was used to pets who stayed home and used a litter box), but Adair was ready. After some tears (mine from the overwhelm of it all, hers from the prospect that Aspen might leave us), I gave in. It was among the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Aspen taught me about youth and joy and exuberance, about indulging in every sensory pleasure along the way, and about aging with grace, because who cares if your snout gets some gray in it if you can still chomp a hard bone with the best of them? She is fifteen now, and she was diagnosed with lymphoma early in January. She’s on chemo and other than one bad reaction three weeks in, she’s done well and is now officially in remission. Her beauty is unmitigated despite her auburn hair having been shaved in various, asymmetrical places for the procedures that are giving her more days to sniff and scratch and meet friends at the dog run. Although she’s thinner than she used to be, she is as loving as ever and infinitely easy to love.

These days Aspen has to go out every few hours. Here in New York City, “go out” means a walk with human company: the coat, the leash, the plastic bag. I’m a wimp in the cold, but taking her out is a privilege, because I love her without reservation. She has never irritated me or hurt my feelings or said anything I wish she hadn’t. A doggy faux pas like eating the cat’s food or drinking out of the toilet is easy to overlook.

So here’s my challenge: to love the humans closest to me and those further out as effortlessly and openly as I love Aspen. To love myself as if I, too, like Aspen, was a “good girl,” no matter what. To love the people I read about or hear about—whether it’s a celebrity or politician, a suspect in a crime or just somebody with a publicist—before I get a chance to judge them or criticize them or envy them, or send some other opinion in this stranger’s direction that won’t help at all.

Hafiz saw great love as what the sun has for the earth. I see it as what I have for this dog. And when I can stretch it and extend it and expand it out far enough, it may not light up the whole world, but it’s bound to brighten things considerably in the immediate vicinity.