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I began my self-study program by reading the pre-Socratics and had since worked my way well into the twentieth century. Consequently, I now found myself trying to understand one of the most incomprehensible philosophers of all time. Martin Hei- degger, a German philosopher, has been variously classified as a phenomenologist, an existentialist, and a mystic. For Heidegger, the fundamental mystery of life was that something, rather than nothing, exists. He spent most of his adult life attempting to develop a philosophy based on this rather obvious fact. Of course, I had spent most of my adult life as a lawyer billing people for my services in six-minute increments, so who was I to judge? As often happens when I read philosophy at night, I soon found myself half asleep and skimming the same paragraph again and again. Something about "Dasein"–Heidegger's term for man, or being. I put the book down. "C'mon, boys," I said to the dogs, "time to hit the hay." They followed me to the bedroom and we began our nightly ritual. Buck jumped on the bed ahead of me, stood on his hind legs, placed his grapefruit-size paws on my shoulders, and gave me a hug. That done, I slipped under the covers so Wheat could begin my face licking. After a suitable interval I turned out the light, then pulled the sheet over my head to signal Wheat the cleaning process was complete. Buck flopped down on my left, Wheat turned around three times and burrowed in on my right. Some people think I'm nuts when it comes to my dogs, but they're all I've got. "Mornin', Pepper," Wanda said. "Mornin', Wanda." She took my Foghorn Leghorn mug from the rack on the back wall and handed it to me. Her blond-gray