Lesson from a Dying Kitten

This has been a terrible day for me. I started the day in a major conflict with my girlfriend, one that resulted in a great degree of distancing and disillusionment and uncertainty about our future together. I think it's safe to say both of us are suffering the pain of great heartache, confusion, and a sense of a breach of a deep connection tonight.

Then tonight I went to dinner with an old friend who's going through a very painful and bitter divorce. The suffering experienced not only by herself but also by her children, family, and others affected is also great, and sure to be prolonged due to the contentious and complicated nature of their situation.

In between those two events I was driving into town this afternoon when I passed an object on the freeway on-ramp which at first looked like a small bag blowing in the wind. Just as I passed it I saw that it was actually a badly injured kitten, shaking and contorting from the effects of its injuries. By the time I could circle back around, pull to the side of the road, and wait for traffic to clear enough that I could run out there and move it from the roadway, it had stopped moving. As fate would have it, there was an emergency veterinary hospital right there within 100 yards of where it was hit. So I ran over there with the kitten, hoping against hope that there was something that could be done for it yet. But by the time I got inside with it, the kitten had died.

I don't know if it died while I was holding it or sometime before. But I do know that regardless of when that was, the kitten managed to teach me a very valuable lesson in our brief time together.

Much had been said about the death of Jack Kevorkian this week, the doctor who performed assisted suicides on individuals in Oregon until being jailed for it. The kitten taught me that all the arguing and finger-pointing and judgmentalism that has marked the conversation about that since the doctor's death means nothing when the moment of truth and action arrives. The kitten taught me that no matter how much I may think about it or argue one way or another about some scenario, there's no way to know until I'm actually in any given situation what life/spirit/God/love will lead me to do if I allow myself the freedom to open up to that voice and let it guide me. With the kitten, I didn't stop to think about whether running out into traffic was safe or legal or what I was or wasn't allowed to do in response to the situation; I just wanted to help ease its suffering however I could.

Throughout the day, I had many choices to make regarding how to respond to suffering. No amount of debating a bunch of what-if scenarios beforehand, and no amount of legislated required responses or limitations, would have mattered in any of these situations, at least not for me. My heart told me how to respond in each case, and I tried to be wise enough to listen and follow its lead.

We're all in this together - all us humans, all the animals, the plants, the planet, everything and everyone, and in every moment there is suffering to be found all around and often within us. For those who want to, let them have their debates and establish their set of canned criteria by which they then take action or not in any particular situation. But for the rest of us, I think each instance of suffering we observe or endure is a call to a greater level of spiritual awareness and to the development and exercising of ever-deepening levels of empathy and compassion for each other. If we wish to be truly prepared to respond to suffering in any situation, I believe our most productive effort will lie not in debate about legalities or philosophies; it will lie in expanding our awareness of our interconnectedness and in deepening our capacity for empathy so that we can face and embrace the suffering we encounter with great wisdom and compassion. Our goal shouldn't be a society in which the central question in response to suffering is "what am I allowed to do?" or worse, "what am I obligated to do?" but instead, "how can I help?" with the answer coming from within, based on compassion and a sense of our oneness with each other and with all things.

Leia Mais…

I Am

There are so many people talking about oneness and the interconnection of all much more eloquently and creatively than I am here.  Go see this movie and you'll see one example of this.

I think the important thing though is that more and more people are waking up to this awareness and are openly and actively promoting it.  And when that number gets large enough and we reach a tipping point in that awareness, big changes and much healing and growth will happen.

Leia Mais…

WWF Video

Beautiful, profound video capturing our interconnectedness...

WWF - We Are All Connected from Troublemakers.tv on Vimeo.

Leia Mais…

Peeling Stickers and Cementing Memories

I was just peeling the price stickers off of the new frames I got for the pictures of my grandmother and grandfather. The pictures sit on a table in my study where I see them every time I enter the room.

As I was doing this it struck me that, although they've both been dead for many years now, they have a living legacy in the lives of their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and also in the lives of the descendants of some of the families who knew them. They live on in memories that are so cherished that we still keep pictures of them out to remind us of them daily. Those pictures remind us of their personalities, their stories, and ultimately of the value of their lives.

And then it struck me that I won't have that. When I die, that'll be it. With no children of my own, and nobody close enough to me that I'm aware of who would care about me enough to maintain an active memory of me, I won't continue to sit posed in a frame on anyone's desk. I won't be someone that anyone gives any thought or remembrance to, certainly not on any regular basis. My story, however significant in my own mind, will quickly be forgotten and lost. I'll just fade away like I never even existed.

Maybe at most some pieces of my work will remain for some relatively short time, and maybe once or twice someone will ask "who did this?" and maybe my name will be remembered and mentioned. And then soon, no more.

So how to live with this? And how to respond to this notion? I really don't know at this point. There have certainly been billions upon billions of people who have walked this earth at one point or another who have long since been forgotten by humanity. Very few achieve anything that warrants lasting recollection by more than a generation or two after them, if even that.

So are we really then just here for ourselves? Or are we here to love and serve without any concern for how or if that energy continues on after our deaths? Does it really matter that we make any sort of positive difference in anyone else's life if they're just going to die soon too? How do we speak then about the purpose of a life, or measure its value? Is my life any more significant than that of my dog, or some random tree in a forest somewhere?

I don't know. For now I have to be content to just sit with these questions and be grateful that I'm here in this life at all. I have to simply enjoy those few precious times when I'm able to make someone smile, or ease someone else's suffering just a little bit, and I get to enjoy the reward of feeling my connectedness to another person or to all of life.

And then I look at my grandfather's picture again. I see the mole on the side of his forehead, and I reach up and touch the identical place on my own head and feel the same mole there. And I feel the gift of a sense of love and connection that reaches across time, across life and death, and I am again grateful. I wish that experience for everyone.

Leia Mais…