Furry teachers of compassion
It’s mouse-in-the-house time of year again.
Technically (having caught two of the buggers today), it’s mice-in-the-hice time of year.
I love mice. They’re beautiful creatures: sweet, funny, resourceful. There’s some in the compost bin in my garden. I take out food scraps and hear them cheer. What I throw away makes for a fine feast for my furry friends.
I love them for another reason too. They’re alive. They deserve love for that one simple fact. They, like you, like me, like all living things, have life and want to live it. Perhaps the thing we all – human and other-than-human – share is this: we do what we can to continue life, until we can no longer do so. If you have ever felt that you cannot go on with life, as I have, it’s like a ripping out of the soul. The soul is life. Life wants life
I could never kill a mouse who comes into my house. Why kill a creature for doing what it was born to do – to live in safety? Why kill a creature because, as the days shorten and the temperature drops, it seeks a new place to eat and sleep – even if that place is my house.
Yet….
Nor can I let the mouse stay. For reasons of health and hygiene, and to protect my electrical wiring, it’s not going to work to have the house overrun by happy rodents.
So I catch them, put them in the car, and drive them to one of several ruined houses round here and hope they’ll make a new home there.
There’s a balance isn’t there? I need things a certain way, for reasons of comfort, health, peace-of-mind. And the way I need things impacts on others. We all cause inconvenience, pain or distress to others.
Our choices impact others. Sometimes radically. Yet we make them. We seek to live the fullest life we each can. Sometimes for me to live my life comes at the expense of another creature’s comfort, convenience or even survival.
There’s no point in worrying about it too much. Life jostles with other lives for space and sustenance. Yet we can be guided, each of us, by a principle: do as little harm as possible. Maybe there’s a second principle: ask whether you’re being driven by selfishness or compassion.
When driven by selfishness, we don’t take account of the price others pay for the choices we make. When driven by compassion, we balance the price they pay ,with our needs. Like many people, I’ve not always done that well. Sometimes I convinced myself my needs took precedence over all else.
The self-centred choice is easy. Kill the mouse. Dump its body and not care you’ll poison whatever comes to eat the corpse.
Or, kill civilians in a neighbouring country to protect ‘your own’.
Or, deny the essential personhood of the creatures we share our world with. If they have no personhood, we never have to consider the price they pay for our self-centredness.
I don’t judge choices others make. We all must find the balance between our needs and the price we expect others to pay to satisfy them.
But I remind myself of this, each time I get into my car on a rainy night to relocate a terrified mouse to a new home: compassion is not words, it’s action.
The world would surely be a better place if we talked less about compassion, but practiced it more.
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