“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves.
And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animals shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.
They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of earth.“ Henry Beston The Outermost House
And each one is traveling on the path fate, fortune or luck has put them on. Every time our paths cross with theirs we have the opportunity to choose whether we will make their burdens lighter, their travails less arduous or their fears more remote.
As different from them as we may be, some of the voices that whisper in our ears are sharing the same secrets. It is not always easy, but be patient. It is not always obvious, but choose to be kind.
