Discovering my best friend at a New Jersey truck stop

By Chris Heller

March 2, 2022

In this week’s issue, writer and editor Chris Heller takes a moment to tell us about the experience and considerable long-term benefits of bringing a new, scruffy friend into his life. But first, if you aren't subscribed to The Distance, please sign up here. Take it away, Chris:

I’m not much of a gambler. I usually gravitate toward safe decisions, or at least I do my best to understand the risks I’m taking when I choose one thing instead of another. Call me careful, boring, anxious, or neurotic — it’s just the way I am.

Which is why, two winters ago on a frigid Sunday night, I couldn’t believe I was suddenly adopting a dog on a whim. My wife and I had driven to the Vince Lombardi Service Area on the New Jersey Turnpike, waiting to pick up a little 18-pound terrier mix we’d never even met. We’d sent $400 to a Connecticut shelter a few days earlier, and they’d instructed us to wait at this particular truck stop for a van on its way up from Texas, so there we were. (It was less sketchy than it might sound, but we’d admittedly pinned a lot of these decisions on faith.)

By most measures, it was the wrong time for us to adopt a pet. Like so many others caught in the early pandemic turmoil, I had recently been laid off from a job that had dominated my life. I found I had no clue what to do next, so I was half-heartedly casting around for a new career while stretching out my unemployment and Covid stimulus checks. My wife and I both felt stir-crazy about enduring a holiday season stuck inside our apartment, unable to celebrate with our families. The outdoor gatherings with friends that had saved our social sanity over the summer had become endurance tests, daring us to withstand sub-freezing weather.

We didn’t know what our lives would look like in six months, much less a couple years. Were we really getting a dog? Now? Wouldn’t it be smarter to wait until life made more sense (or was at least more predictable)?

But when the van pulled up and the driver swung open the rear doors, I saw a scruffy ball of fur curled in the corner of a crate on the top row — our dog, I realized. He was shivering and frightened, his eyes darting and his ears perked at full attention. He looked and stunk like a used mop. I wrapped him in a blanket, held him in my lap on the ride home, and gave him a bath the minute we walked into our apartment. We decided to call him Ernie.

That night, I had no idea that bringing Ernie home would be the best decision I’d made in a long time — I just remember hoping he wouldn’t pee on the floor.

But today, the wisdom and benefits we stumbled into by adding Ernie to our family are obvious, and precious: Adopting a dog has made me more patient and mindful, grounded in a way I never quite felt before he was zooming around our apartment, constantly underfoot and ready to play.

I’m sure I’m far from alone in recognizing my life as recently enriched by a pet. Roughly 23 million U.S. households have gotten a pet since 2020, according to an ASPCA survey. The “pandemic puppy” trend is so prevalent that odds are you personally know somebody with a new pet, or you are that somebody with a new pet. As much as I think Ernie is a one-of-a-kind pooch, studies suggest that the ways he has improved my life are common.

Researchers have found many links between health, happiness, and pet ownership, though admittedly it’s unclear if having a pet actually causes that boost to well-being. Perhaps pet adoption is a decision some people make when they feel ready to grow, meaning the adoption is a reflection of that sense of security, rather than its source. Nevertheless, multiple studies show that people believe they feel better after spending time with their pets — perhaps because interacting with your dog can actually raise levels of oxytocin in your blood.

The National Institutes of Health points to additional studies that suggest interacting with animals can lower your blood pressure, fight off loneliness, and decrease levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

I’m not about to start measuring my oxytocin and cortisol rates, but I buy those findings, backed by, well, how good Ernie makes me feel. When I’m having a tough day, walking around the block with Ernie or playing a quick game of fetch does more to cheer me up than anything else. On the really hard days, just seeing his happy face and wagging tail makes me less stressed, helping me to clear my head and ground myself in the moment. Spending just a few minutes with him in the middle of a workday feels like the kind of “healthy distraction” the Mayo Clinic recommends to manage anxiety.

Even the responsibilities are gratifying: I live more consistently and reliably now that I’m sticking to a regular schedule. Ernie doesn’t understand “sleeping in” or “late dinner,” and the purity of his routine — his worldview, really — gives me compelling motivation to fight the formation of my own bad habits. He relies on me.

I also find it helpful to know that the power of this relationship isn’t because I’m projecting human thoughts on Ernie, or anthropomorphizing him. A growing body of research has shown that dogs are not just “pets” or “toys,” but emotionally sophisticated, complex beings who interact with humans in a way that fulfills social and emotional needs our species share — making dogs, in some sense, “people.” Other studies of canine DNA have shown that dogs and humans linked up at least as early as 11,000 years ago, indicating that our species actually evolved together. That means dogs aren’t just our best friends — they potentially helped shape humans into who we now are, as we did them.

When we picked up Ernie at that Turnpike truck stop, we didn’t know what to expect long-term. I doubt we would’ve even considered adopting a pet if we weren’t nine months into the pandemic, worn out and eager to introduce anything new into our lives. But if we hadn’t adopted him, we would’ve missed out on so much joy — all because we decided to take a risk, trusting ourselves enough to figure things out along the way, even though we hadn’t made a foolproof plan.

That’s the most important thing I’ve learned here: Being risk-averse isn’t just about the outcome. I’m never going to be comfortable with huge gambles, but that wasn’t the only reason why I’ve often felt better playing it safe. I just didn’t trust myself enough to try anything that wasn’t extremely cautious, a known quantity. Everything feels like a risk when you’re not confident — at least until you take a chance, anyway, and find out what you can really handle.

Chris Heller is a writer and editor who has worked for Vulture, New York magazine, and the Atlantic. Ernie is a terrier who has begged for belly rubs from every human he’s ever met.

Alone on the mountaintop, a GOAT

Alex writes:

This year is the NBA’s 75th season, and during the basketball league’s annual All Star Game recently, the proceedings included a recognition of the “75th Anniversary Team” — the 75 best players in basketball history, as decided by a panel of media, players, coaches, and execs.

For devoted fans of the sport, it was powerful to see the roster of honorees gathered, spanning generations. But running beneath the shared celebration, there was a deeper current of respect, palpable even through the televised broadcast: the absolute reverence for Michael Jordan, widely considered the “greatest of all time,” or, by acronym, the GOAT. There are few legitimate arguments to be made that anyone else deserves the title more than Jordan; even those fans who submit impassioned cases for LeBron James usually concede that MJ is the one to beat.

The concept of “the GOAT” is increasingly common. It’s popular in sports, where the entire premise of these activities is to produce winners and losers, and, within those bounds, there are measurable stats. As a result, one can say with strong quantitative evidence that Player A is better than Player B. A list like this one even attempts to rank athletes across sports, by looking at who was the most “winningest,” the individual who most warped the premise of competition by dint of sheer skill or athleticism.

For me, however, a debate about GOATs gets particularly interesting when it’s not just about championships but starts to consider less statistical measurements, like beauty, grace, or style. (In basketball, Jordan is arguably the GOAT here too — there’s a reason people say he could fly.) Here’s where Serena Williams’ domination of tennis might become clear, or, in soccer, where you can appreciate the argument for a player like Dutch virtuoso Johann Cruyff over a more utilitarian — but also more effective — player like Lionel Messi. But of course, this all becomes subjective.

Then we go beyond sports — are there GOATs in literature, in music, in acting, in leadership, in entrepreneurship? To many, the answer is “yes!”, but consensus is rare and never definitive. Beatles or Stones? Tolstoy or Woolf? Why do we insist on naming “the greatest” for anything, anyway? It’s a profound method for sifting through history — identifying the greatest performances that humanity has offered. It gives fans a perspective for conversation, debate, and competition, all methods for developing a deeper understanding.

The question of a GOAT also raises a compelling, uniquely long-term question: Is this person really the greatest of all time… or just so far? And that, for some of us, is why we’ll always keep paying attention.

Who do you consider a GOAT in a specific field or topic? Is recognizing a GOAT important to you?
Write to us at TheDistance@fundrise.com

What you're saying:

After last week’s issue about using non-digital diversions to find peace and calm, readers told us about their own tips for establishing focus:

Paul Fallavollita: “I recommend the humble list. Umberto Eco wrote an entire book uncovering how listmaking resides at the core of our civilization. List anything: things you need to buy, books to read, or websites to visit. One can even tidy up the mind by listing everything one knows off the top of the head about a given topic.”

Benjamin Olvera: “I find that when I return home from playing tennis, I am ready and willing to tackle any project or task. The state of flow that I’m in while playing seems to translate to the rest of my day. I feel like I can conquer anything, yet all I have done is hit a fuzzy yellow ball for a couple of hours.”

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The Distance is supported by Fundrise, edited by Alex Slotnick and Helen Chandler, and produced by Katie Valavanis and Brett Wilson, with help from Motasem Halawani. Our design director is Erin Culliney.