divine separateness
what i've learned observing animals in my life
my brother loves animals. when he was 3 years old our childcare provider asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he said, with confidence, a deer. she said something crazy that they would only say in minnesota like, well if you were a deer some hunter might hunt you down. killing his vibe, almost immediately.
i’m not sure why, but in my family it always made more sense if i was just something different. Daniel, a very black and white person, laid claim to his interests and his opinions, and it just seemed easier if i decided to be the complete opposite. there is no competition when you are uninterested in the interests of your competitor. so when daniel loved animals or nature, i was indifferent or uninterested. i opted for different interests like the theatre, pop stars, my friends.
our first dog died when i was 9 years. my brother and i were at another brother sister sibling duos’ house when our mom called. we knew that our 13 year old dogs life was slowing down, so it wasn’t a shock it happened that night, but it was dramatic nonetheless. it was our shared first encounter with death. at our friends house, we were supposed to have a sleepover. Daniel, distraught, went home immediately. but when given the option, i decided i’d rather have the sleepover like i planned, not feeling the weight of the death, yet. my friend asked me as we were falling asleep, are you sure you’re okay? if my dog died i’d be crying so much. i thought, yeah that is weird. and said truthfully, yes i feel actually fine.
i still think about this.
the next morning my parents took us out to breakfast. my mom came to get me from the sleepover and we drove to meet my brother and dad. in the car she asked how i was doing, and she told me how my brother slept in her bed the night before, uncommon at his age of 11. she told me how he woke up a few times in the night, realized again what had happened, and cried more.
that was when i started to digest the situation. the thought of my older brother, a grounding person in my life, grieving, was hard for me to process. it still makes me emotional to think about him enduring that grief over and over again. i felt then the way i feel now when i think of him or my dad or my mom struggling, like i would do much of anything to take it away.
we got another dog a few months later and i was excited. i knew it was something to be excited about. our new dog was named olive oil at the shelter but we wanted to call her ollie. a name that, as i got older, ended up being so basic for a dog, sometimes i would introduce her with her given name.
she was a difficult dog in a suburban home. she was found as a stray, so when released from the front door she would run for miles. i think it only happened twice but both times it was more anxiety than i was used to at that point in my life. she barked her head off and struggled to settle into the way that life happened in our neighborhood. neighbors on their decks. cars driving past. kids playing and laughing. her anxiety caused me anxiety and i didn’t know how to feel around her.
she did some training with a trainer and stopped barking so much which eased the social anxiety. she also become an expert walker. but her anxiety and her intuition around protection amplified whenever she was on a leash. my dad, a confident and generally unbothered person, walked her off leash trusting her to be a much friendlier creature that way. and she was.
when we moved to a new house she struggled to transition again. within a few months, tied up to a leash in the front of the house, she bit two people. it was nerve wracking for us all. concern for the folks who were caught in her crossfire. anxiety around what would happen to her. could we keep a dog who bites? it caused fights and intensified the already existing anxiety.
i refused to walk her.
it became hard after that for me to connect with her. she made me nervous and at the same time i felt like i understood her. i wanted to defend her, explain why she was a complicated creature, but i couldn’t deal with the fear that it would happen again in front of me. for a few years she stayed pretty close to home. my dad still walked her, and she had mostly friendly encounters with other dogs or trusted people.
in her old age she mellowed out so we did too. it became easier to walk her or to introduce her to new people. she died my senior year of college. with masks on, my parents brought her to campus so i could say goodbye. i appreciated the opportunity to snuggle against her warm belly one more time. i worried for my dad especially, the two were a bonded pair.
i’m insecure about my lack of closeness to the creatures that have lived their life alongside me. i used to defend my disinterest with anxiety — amplifying the experience of having an unpredictable animal as the reason for my disconnection. i still think there is truth there but i’m not sure it captures the entire image of my experience with animals. For a long time i thought it was something about me. having pets or loving animals wasn’t something i would experience. they were a passion of my brother’s, not of mine.
i have had a lot of animal influences since Kobee and Ollie. daniel got a dog named toast who made me believe that something wasn’t wrong with me. i think she’s hilarious and adorable and living with her for a year during covid made me feel like she was my dog too. when i moved to philly i became a dog walker and dog sitter, meeting an abundance of sweet creatures. moving to new york introduced me to the dream of having a tiny chihuahua to call mine. my ex girlfriend, someone who changed the way i interact with the world a thousand times over, introduced me to three really wonderful dogs who i loved endlessly.
like my brother, my ex was an animal lover. that was obvious. but they were also an animal respecter. something i have come to understand as distinct. many animal lovers do not always respect animals. being an animal respecter was the lens that changed my relationships to animals the most.
my ex loved their creatures with a depth that i continue to admire endlessly. it brings tears to my eyes to think about how much understanding they had for the other inhabitants of our planet. they loved their dogs and the cats of their life. they loved the birds out their window and the squirrels at the park. i saw them approach nature and it’s creatures with curiosity and devotion. a desire to understand them as much as a respect for each creatures’ deep inner world.
i think we as a culture love animals much more than we respect them. even our pets we care for because they do a service for us, giving us love, value, and sometimes working for us. when we don’t love animals i think we tolerate them and when we only tolerate them we don’t value the complexity of their lives. to revere an animals life and lived experiences as having the same value as my own is still new and potent. it is a way of thinking and seeing that i have to continuously practice, and i do. of course, the concept of respecting animals, revering the individuality of their lives, is a deeply indigenous one, and not novel to many communities. for me, the idea that my experience of life and all that comes with it (joy, grief, ambition, love, community) is shared across other species, in fact the idea that we could have learned these things from observing other species, has become spiritual.
i wrote in a card to my ex last year, since knowing you i started saying thank you to the trees. out of everything i learned from you, that one is my favorite.
their love and devotion to animals extended to a love and devotion to all organisms and through them i learned what it meant to pause to observe to say thank you to say hello. through them i learned to recognize the living creatures that are all around me and how to interact with them with care and respect rather than ambivalence or disregard.
when my dog Kobee died, i cried for my brother. someone who connects with other creatures in a profoundly spiritual way. watching him grieve a creature that we both were raised around made me recognize the intricate differences of our inner worlds. his experience of love and grief and purpose were inherently different from my own even when we have the same DNA, the same lived experience.
my grief when my dog died was grief of the reality that i was separate. that i was going to have to endure these things on my own. that my brother would have to endure these things on his own. even the one person whose blood flows nearly the same way mine does, the two of us would still move through life encountering suffering, encountering joy, encountering growth entirely on our own.
when my ex and i broke up i was devastated. it was another realization of this same inherent alone-ness. the understanding that as hard as you try to know someone and engulf yourself in the world from their perspective, you will never know their experience of existence. acknowledging this reality was accepting that there is always a potential, and often inevitable, loss in love and connection. an inevitable loss that we often witness children confront first with the lives of their pets. but we continue to endure the same grief over and over again throughout our life. probably needing the same tenderness we offer children.
it is destabilizing, the realization of separateness. and yet it is also the only thing i can tell you confidently is actually true. i recognize that there is wisdom inside of all beings that I will never know. in the animals, the plants, the way the wind blows. but even in our most important relationships. in moments of uncertainty the truth that we: you and me, the trees, our dogs, the spider crawling across your floor, have completely individual experiences is a comfortable certainty. there is something hopeful in the not knowing. when i feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me, when something that feels entirely impossible has happened, i find myself outside. not only is the air on my face a stabilizing force but it offers a moment to observe the abundance of existence that is bubbling around me. it offers some sort of surrender. the deeply sobering reminder that i will never know much of anything at all.
it is neutralizing to remember that the way we can not fathom another creatures mind is the same truth about other humans. and yet, with other creatures we continue to choose closeness to one another. maybe its biological, evolutionary, but maybe it’s also divine, love-filled. when we can’t communicate through words or customs, we still choose to share life with our creatures, to admire their existence, to commit to a long term relationship of devotion and care. can we not learn from those relationships how to approach our interspecies relationships with the same surrender? the powerful acceptance of the never knowing, and loving still.
and with this comes the most comforting reminder: inside of uncertainty is possibility. and so if we are all entirely separate are we not also entirely interconnected?
my friend yisel runs a weekly meditation that she calls what if. it is an inner guide meditation rooted in the excitement of the question: WHAT IF? her sheer joy explaining the abundance of invitations and possibilities when we ask ourselves the question is enough to open my eyes to the wonderings of our world. when we know nothing at all, then everything is possible.
the trees have observed their environment for far longer than any of us ever will. the birds have seen perspectives much different than those which we can see. there is wisdom all around us and i have to hope that even when i can’t know the divine pathway in front of me, that there is a careful intentionality to all these things. that the world is laying itself out in ways that only it understands. and when i don’t know the way forward; when the steps become rocky; when currents pick up; or the wind pushes me aside; who am i to say that the rocks aren’t sending a message, that the current isn’t offering redirection, that the wind isn’t whispering slow down? and for a moment, may i trust, that i am walking along a path just as it establishes its own great intention.
what if.
reading list:
How Far The Light Reaches - continues to be my favorite book
