This is another entry in my Blast from the Past series, this time a commentary I wrote at the end of 2002 and published in January, 2003. That soon after the 911 attacks, many people turned their companion animals and nature for solace. Since then, advancements in communication technology routine inform us of multiple, similarly horrible events worldwide. At the same time and regardless how many acres we may own, we continue to know less and less about the wild and domestic animals living in it. Thoughts of controlling other animals’ behaviors, not understanding them, dominate our society. At the same time though and back then, we need them more than ever.
January invariably spawns numerous commentaries about resolutions we should make to resolve every problem known to plague everyone, including animals. For pet-owners this, in turn, may generate a multitude of promises to correct those animal-related problems which we soon break when the demands of daily living take hold again. Rather than contribute to that guilt-producing sequence, this year I offer three quotations from those much wiser than I which I believe are of particular value to all who enjoy interacting with the nonhuman animals who comprise the overwhelming majority of the animal life on this planet.
The first, from Henry Beston’s The Outermost House, serves as the cornerstone of my personal philosophy of animals, so much so that I use it often in my lectures and gave it a place of honor in the archives of this site. To me, it serves as an eloquent reminder when arrogance and/or ignorance leads us to believe that we elevate animals when we relate to them as if they were human:
We need another and a wiser and perhaps 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 therefore 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, we greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by the man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and more 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 the earth.
I mentioned the second quotation, attributed to Lao-Tzu, in a commentary several months ago but believe it deserves mention again. Whether we 
speak of yet another method of food-, gadget-, or drug-centered dog training or the relocation of wildlife, so much of human interaction with animals consists of trying to get them to do things our way. In addition to denying them their unique species qualities, our naivety greatly reduces the probability of success in these endeavors. Lao-Tzu sums up the ideal way to generate change in others of any species far better than I:
Good teachers are best when students barely know they exist
Not so good when students always obey and acclaim them
Worse when students despise them.
Of good teachers, when their work is done and their aims fulfilled,
The student will say, “I did this myself.”
Admittedly, applying the Beston and Lao-Tzu philosophies to nonhuman animal interactions requires the desire and commitment to understand an animal’s physical, behavioral, and relationship needs as well as our own. On the other hand, what better way to use that bigger brain our species so often claims as proof of our superiority?
The third quotation, from Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, reminds me, and now I hope you, that no matter how hard we try, no matter how much love and devotion we feel for our work, we can never do all that needs to be done. Don Quixote asks,
What thanks does a knight-errant deserve for going out of his head when he has a good cause?
Much as I never would have admitted it when I allowed myself to get caught up in those feelings of self-elevating martyrdom that characterized my youth, the answer is None. Thanks to the knowledge and experience gained from expending horrendous amounts of energy almost going out of my head for various good animal-related causes, I finally (!) realized that this is a very foolish thing to do for two reasons. One, it leaves far less energy to effect those changes I can. Two, it diminishes and even obscures the special joy necessary for any endeavor to truly succeed in the long run. Show me someone who can’t find the joy and humor in their work under even the worst circumstances and I’ll show you someone who needs to find other work.
So when I feel myself about to lose it when someone comes up with yet another food-, gadget-, or drug-based method of animal training or encounter those who refuse to examine long-held beliefs about animals and the way we treat them simply because doing so violates some arbitrary standard of political correctness, I think of Quixote. In my mind, he and I look at the situation that threatens to undo me, then we look at each other, then one of us says, “Why don’t we get the pets and go for a long walk in the woods and enjoy ourselves?”
I write this on Christmas morning as forecasters predict yet another snowstorm that ensures I’ll be shoveling rather than walking in the woods. But even as I accomplish this and other far more challenging tasks in the year ahead, I am never apart from the knowledge that I am surrounded by those gifted with senses I’ve lost or never gained, those capable of learning in their own unique ways, and those whose welfare comprises a good cause that delights my mind and lifts my spirit.
Were I to succumb to the temptation to resolve anything this first month of this year or any any month of any year following, I would resolve to be worthy of these gifts for yet another year.
This is another entry in my Blast from the Past series, this time a commentary I wrote at the end of 2002 and published in January, 2003. That soon after the 911 attacks, many people turned their companion animals and nature for solace. Since then, advancements in communication technology routine inform us of multiple, similarly horrible events worldwide. At the same time and regardless how many acres we may own, we continue to know less and less about the wild and domestic animals living in it. Thoughts of controlling other animals’ behaviors, not understanding them, dominate our society. At the same time though and back then, we need them more than ever.
The first, from Henry Beston’s The Outermost House, serves as the cornerstone of my personal philosophy of animals, so much so that I use it often in my lectures and gave it a place of honor in the archives of this site. To me, it serves as an eloquent reminder when arrogance and/or ignorance leads us to believe that we elevate animals when we relate to them as if they were human:
We need another and a wiser and perhaps 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 therefore 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, we greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by the man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and more 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 the earth.
I mentioned the second quotation, attributed to Lao-Tzu, in a commentary several months ago but believe it deserves mention again. Whether we
speak of yet another method of food-, gadget-, or drug-centered dog training or the relocation of wildlife, so much of human interaction with animals consists of trying to get them to do things our way. In addition to denying them their unique species qualities, our naivety greatly reduces the probability of success in these endeavors. Lao-Tzu sums up the ideal way to generate change in others of any species far better than I:
Good teachers are best when students barely know they exist
Not so good when students always obey and acclaim them
Worse when students despise them.
Of good teachers, when their work is done and their aims fulfilled,
The student will say, “I did this myself.”
Admittedly, applying the Beston and Lao-Tzu philosophies to nonhuman animal interactions requires the desire and commitment to understand an animal’s physical, behavioral, and relationship needs as well as our own. On the other hand, what better way to use that bigger brain our species so often claims as proof of our superiority?
What thanks does a knight-errant deserve for going out of his head when he has a good cause?
Much as I never would have admitted it when I allowed myself to get caught up in those feelings of self-elevating martyrdom that characterized my youth, the answer is None. Thanks to the knowledge and experience gained from expending horrendous amounts of energy almost going out of my head for various good animal-related causes, I finally (!) realized that this is a very foolish thing to do for two reasons. One, it leaves far less energy to effect those changes I can. Two, it diminishes and even obscures the special joy necessary for any endeavor to truly succeed in the long run. Show me someone who can’t find the joy and humor in their work under even the worst circumstances and I’ll show you someone who needs to find other work.
So when I feel myself about to lose it when someone comes up with yet another food-, gadget-, or drug-based method of animal training or encounter those who refuse to examine long-held beliefs about animals and the way we treat them simply because doing so violates some arbitrary standard of political correctness, I think of Quixote. In my mind, he and I look at the situation that threatens to undo me, then we look at each other, then one of us says, “Why don’t we get the pets and go for a long walk in the woods and enjoy ourselves?”
I write this on Christmas morning as forecasters predict yet another snowstorm that ensures I’ll be shoveling rather than walking in the woods. But even as I accomplish this and other far more challenging tasks in the year ahead, I am never apart from the knowledge that I am surrounded by those gifted with senses I’ve lost or never gained, those capable of learning in their own unique ways, and those whose welfare comprises a good cause that delights my mind and lifts my spirit.
Were I to succumb to the temptation to resolve anything this first month of this year or any any month of any year following, I would resolve to be worthy of these gifts for yet another year.