Sometimes there are “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,” as the poet Wordsworth wrote. And often our responses to such thoughts end in silence or poetry.
Frequently, our deepest emotions arise when we face death, a reality most of us seldom talk about but all must encounter.
The other day “Grandma” died. She was a 14-year-old feral cat living near our backyard. My wife faithfully cared for her as if she were one of the other three felines who live in our home with a rescued beagle who was found wandering pregnant in the Tennessee woods. We are a household of misfits, myself one of them.
I don’t know why people let their cats run loose outside without having them spayed or neutered, but they do, thus reducing their lifespans and creating problems for others.
The dying cat was first discovered in someone’s flower bed a block away, then our next-door neighbor helped bring her home. She died the next day and was buried in our backyard. Their acts, seemingly inconsequential in the light of the world’s suffering, brought me a measure of hope that people can behave compassionately to both humans and animals.
The words of Wordsworth brought the meaning home when he wrote that life’s great meaning sometimes is found in “little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love” a wise lesson in the face of how humans sometimes treat each other so cruelly.
In truth, these kind acts may express the essence of what philosophy and religion have been pointing us toward all along, the real reason we are here at all — to help one another, the essence of the Golden Rule of compassion, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. And that includes our animal companions.
When you love anything, you must also learn to let go. Those who love most often hurt most when facing loss. Perhaps that’s why Plato when asked to summarize his philosophy reportedly said: “Practice dying.” He meant that by learning to accept losses as part of life, we learn to live deeper.
Many years and neighbors ago, one next-door neighbor spotted me feeding the sparrows outside and spoke to me because she cared for another creature who came each morning to feed upon her back porch. I ended reflecting on her wisdom silently at first but eventually took form in a poem with these words:
“I know I cannot save all these tiny birds.
But I can scatter seed in hope one or two survive.
And if I make light the burdens of their beating hearts,
in heaven’s eye that might be enough.”
There is a moral gulf so great we cannot completely understand it between those who save lives and those who take them, between those who hate others and those who love them, between those who cause pain and those who ease the pains of others.
I choose to honor those who nurture life, not those who abuse it. They are the beacons of hope in a cold and sometimes unforgiving world.
John C. Morgan is a writer and former ethics teacher whose weekly columns appear in this newspaper.
