The Way We Love Animals Matters
Marcus Aurelius, CS Lewis and our animal friends
“When you’ve done well and another has benefited by it — why like a fool do you look for a third thing on top—credit for the good deed or a favor in return?”
-Marcus Aurelius
Love languages are funny. Some people really value conversation in their relationship, others value closeness. I remember early on in my marriage I thought it was uncomfortable to sit on the couch in silence with my wife, just watching TV and saying nothing for two hours. Inside I was panicking like, “Are we not in sync?! Why aren’t we talking?!” But she would always say it was just nice to be together and share space.
What are the love languages you’ve seen in your life? Flowers….jewelry….ice cream…physical touch…
My Mom is in town visiting. She has a farm in North Carolina. More of a petting zoo, honestly. Lots of cute and fuzzy animals who don’t produce anything but smiles. There are rabbits! She told me that contrary to popular belief, bunnies don’t like to be held. It goes against their instincts as prey for larger animals to be held and taken off their feet. Their ability to dart away at any given moment is their strength. Without feet on the ground, they feel helpless.
My dog (Kylo) hates being hugged. It’s funny to watch. His head moves away and his body pulls in the other direction as you wrap your arms around him.
But as human beings, we have wants and needs ourselves. We show love differently. We want to hold the rabbit because it’s like a baby. We want to hug the dog because he is a dear friend. But that’s not what they want.
Can we accept that?
CS Lewis once said that the true mark of human beings’ primacy over animals is how we “acknowledge duties to them which they do not acknowledge to us.”
We do things for them without any real hope of thanks. Marcus Aurelius called this the “third thing”, referencing how we sell ourselves short by doing what we’re supposed to do but only in search of validation or praise. Animals are never going to give that to you.
This matters. Our gentleness to animals is an expression of deep love and empathy. It’s something that makes you unique.
But what good is it if you are gentle to your cat and cruel to your spouse? What good is it if you’re understanding of the dog who threw up on the rug after eating too much grass, but angry when your toddler throws a spoon full of pudding across the dining room?
Animals are training for how we should treat our fellow human beings. We diminish our dignity when we are mean-spirited to animals because we have the greater capacity for choice in how we engage them.
Be patient. Be gentle. Trust me, I’m writing this as a reminder to myself. It’s hard sometimes. But it’s what we’re here to do. So do it.
Have a great weekend folks.
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Your mum sounds like a wonderful soul. I only contribute on a much smaller scale with foster kittens in my home. You learn a lot about boundaries and behaviour when you are trying to get feral, abandoned, and relinquished kittens used to your hands and voice and home, then ready for their forever homes.
From experience, people who are kind to animals aren't always kind to humans. There's a Nat Geo series now on YouTube called 'Beastly' where you see several examples of people who've clearly been badly hurt, and can only love animals, but in doing so turn the animals into 'babies'.
Equally though, people who are unkind to humans, are almost always unkind to animals too.