Chewing on the Cud

Guilty as accused. In his book Authentic Happiness, Martin Seligman says that women tend to ruminate about problems while men tend to do something active and distracting like go out in the driveway and shoot hoops. And you can probably guess that "chewing the cud" is not a recommended path to a sunshiney outlook.

Well, I figure I've chewed more cud in my life than all the cows in Texas put together. In fact, the synonyms for "ruminate" sound like the total contents of my mind: cogitate, contemplate, mull, ponder, speculate. And when I run out of self-propelled ruminating power, I call friends and family for emergency rumination assistance and push until they too chew my cud. Yum, yum. Now I'm pretty sure that those original cud chewers, the cows, only regurgitate and rechew their fodder once to get all the good out of it that they are ever going to get and I'm doubly sure that cud-chewing is never a group activity.

I'm getting better about it. Perfect? Hah. I still love the old "he said, she said" rehash of a recent Trauma Drama. But now I realize the poor choice I'm making when I start down that path and instead, I head out to the meadow to eat buttercups.

"The cows are in the meadow eating buttercups." From "Ring Around the Rosie" second verse.