Lessons in Humanity

For Judy and Jim

Sometimes something begins so quietly that you only notice it once it has already become part of you. A glance that touches, a gesture that feels familiar – and suddenly something has settled into your life without ever knocking at the door.

I have learned that everything carries as much soul as I am willing to give it. A stone, warm in my hand, can become a faithful companion if I choose to see it that way. All the more so an animal, whose gaze can speak more than words ever could. Perhaps this is what remains: not the place to which something goes when it is gone – but the meaning it leaves behind within me.

To reduce this to mere stimulus and response is to overlook that meaning is not measured in a laboratory – it grows in the heart.

Animals practice what we humans so often find difficult: loyalty without compromise, quiet discretion, unconditional love, and an almost boundless tolerance. They make us pause – simply because their gaze renders everything else unimportant for a moment. They are demonstrably balm for heart and body, extending life without uttering a word. And they teach us things that no book can capture with such clarity: forgiveness, loyalty, connection without words. And that food can be a celebration – every single day. When they leave, it hurts, just as it hurts when a person leaves. Because it is never “just an animal,” but a piece of life lived together.

You notice it first in the small absences. Where once there was movement, there is only air. Sounds are missing, though you cannot immediately name them, and daily life stumbles briefly before it moves on.

At some point the place is empty. The familiar movement at the corner of your eye is gone, and the room sounds different. Your hand reaches instinctively into emptiness, as if something should be there that always was. You realize how much of your own life was woven into those incidental moments – and that they cannot be retrieved.

In the end, what remains is gratitude for all I was allowed to learn, a loss that makes me quieter, and a love that endures. And it is precisely for this reason that I tell it through an animal – because in its silent being lies everything that words can scarcely capture, and in a purity that, in a paradoxical way, teaches us what we have come to call “human.”

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