This evening I tried giving my dog some of her epilepsy medicine, but she just didn't want to take it. I tried all the tricks I know and nothing worked. I even put peanut butter and lasagna in her bowl! But she would just sniff at it and then turn around to lie down or go see what the cat was doing. I imagine she was probably feeling ill, but I couldn't help getting slightly angry with her.

I'm sure I must've looked quite silly to a centered/grounded person. Getting angry with a dog, for being a dog. I guess I thought that maybe I could get her to take it if I tried hard enough, but the fact that she didn't, while I wanted her to, made me angry.

I thought about it while in the midst of the anger, and of the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna repeatedly tells Arjuna to "dedicate all of the fruits of his labor to him". A hard thing to do, but I can see how, if one is attached to the expected result of one's action, we can easily get frustrated or angry when said result doesn't happen.

Is the opposite case true? I imagine it is. If I get what I expect then I'm either happier (satisfied) for it or entirely indifferent. In the happier case, I could still become attached to the fruits of my labor. Example: a sculptor being attached to their creation, or a writer to their notebook. Or even being attached to the feeling of goodness that comes when one does something successfully. This attachment is of course a source of disillusionment later on.

I don't know if it is actually in the Gita or I read it somewhere else (maybe some commentary; possibly by Ram Dass or Eknath Easwaran), but there's this really cool metaphor: a person plants a seed but it is not the person that "grows" the seed, rather, it's God/universe. Having this in mind, Krishna's words take on a slightly different interpretation: don't get attached to the outcomes, as you have absolutely no control or power over them. You may play a role in facilitating the preconditions for something to happen (plant the seed; mix peanut butter with the epilepsy medicine and put it in a bowl), but what exactly happens is out of our hands (the plant grows into a flower or a weed, or doesn't grow at all; my dog eats the peanut butter and her medicine—or not).

The thing is we of course have an idea of what should happen, which is informed by previous experience. In my experience my dog almost always eats the peanut butter. But sometimes, things go differently. We forget about the fact that this "experience" is just a historical note. We start treating these patterns as an absolute, and get upset when things go otherwise than we expect.

I think in great part this is a lack of humility on our part. We lack humility to constantly remember that what is around and inside us is, ultimately, a mystery.