When strangers, with their unfamiliar voices and smells came to my apartment, my cats would hide somewhere safe.
It is amazing to me that humans think we are so smart. Yes, we can count and reason and plan and evaluate. We can also become depressed and flat out refuse to do the thing that would completely change our lives. We have the luxury of being arrogant, stubborn and unyielding.
I often find it interesting that animals make choices completely based on their safety.
If there is an unfamiliar sound , they run. If there is an unfamiliar smell or they do something that causes pain, they wince and retreat. Humans allow someone to mistreat them and gallop back towards their tormentor for more of the same.
When I or my partner yelled at or around our fur balls, they would scuttle away until it was absolutely safe to reemerge.
I have allowed myself to be physically assaulted and talked to in the worst way by dirt bags and then turned around and made dinner for them and apologized for not being “whatever” they decided I should be at the moment.
Fucked up right .
While a majority of my mishaps and odd behavior was limited to my youth, I have still done things that leave me scratching my head and asking myself why. Am I better than an animal ? Are you ?
There have been times when I literally ran to the danger, the pain that I knew some guy would give me then feigned disbelief when it was meted out.
How dumb.
I have taught myself : pain bad, kindness, respect, thoughtfulness good. It is difficult but not impossible to change. For me, I have spent years with people mistreating me and then saying it was for my own good – they were just being honest – I’m too sensitive or that if I changed that they would change.
In other words, I was the cause of all the grief that they so eagerly afflicted upon me.
With some potent introspection, I became pissed. Like the aforementioned furry friends, some human beings will never change and can only do what it is they do. To be better than animals we must exercise great judgment.
We must run like the proverbial bats out of hell when it is clear that something or someone is only interested in bringing pain.
When animals are beaten, they run away form their tormentors.
Humans can absolutely know that someone will do them wrong and yet willingly go along with the shenanigans presented.