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.

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