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January 2000 Re-falling in Love With What we Care About By Rae Sikora

The areas of vegetarianism, environmentalism, and animal advocacy will only spread to the larger community if we share with each other in an inviting rather than a fighting mode. I think this is actually starting to happen in all of these movements. We are much less separate than we used to be. More animal rights groups are using 100 percent post consumer paper in their literature; more environmental groups are serving vegan meals at their conferences. None of us has all the answers and we must constantly and lovingly be willing to share and listen. This is the basis of humane education and why all forms of education are important.

Positive Outlook
Are we doomed as we head into the next Millennium? Seeing a doomed or hopeful future can affect the kind of energy we put into the world. Bringing about the changes we wish to see in the world is a tall order, but is necessary if we are to grow at our core, live our values, and move toward a more compassionate society. I think that combining spirituality with activism and education is the only way we will truly move toward creating the world we wish to see. This does not mean that we all have to go to a church or synagogue or New Age retreat center. It is about reconnecting with the beauty around us and within us, and living a life that reflects what we care about. It also means not turning our backs on the difficult and dark areas. We need to push our egos aside and really look at how our individual lives, organizations, and our work impact and reflect what we care about.

Activists and educators often sit in front of their computers for most of the day in florescent-lit offices. The sunrise, trees, clouds, stars, moon can all be going through their glorious daily routines while we go through our routines and totally forget that we are part of the natural world and the natural cycles. We protect what and who we love. Therefore, we must leave our human-made structures and re-fall in love with the planet we are trying to protect. We can then go from this falling-in-love stage to a committed relationship with all life.

It is impossible to distinguish between what should happen and what will happen. Every day and moment we are going toward a great unknown. As humans, many of us try to pretend that this isn’t so. We like to act as if we know the future and live and work as if we know what tomorrow brings. When confronted with crises, we tend to respond as individuals, as a society, and globally. If the crisis is a relatively slow event, however, we don’t see it as a crisis. For instance, if I told you to go to the nearest river and dip your cup in the water and drink, you wouldn’t do it. You would know better. But if I went back 500 years and asked someone to do the same thing, they would readily dip and drink. If I told them that 500 years into the future, their descendants would not be able to drink that water and in fact it would be poison, they would laugh and say, “That’s impossible. We would never poison our own water.”

We can also look around and see that nearly every major city has a children’s cancer hospital. Because these events have happened over time, we don’t feel the crisis of it all and so do not respond with all we have. Yet, on a deeper level, the crisis is felt by all of us. We feel such a lack of power that we try to “go to sleep” by turning on the TV or going shopping at the mall.

Living as if it’s the Last 24 Hours
At a recent conference, I asked a thousand people the following questions: “If you have only 24 hours left to live, where will you spend it? How will you spend it and who, if anyone, will you have with you?” When I read their answers on small slips of paper, not one person said, “I will watch TV, I will sit in front of the computer, I will sit in traffic for hours in my car, I will fight with those who don’t see things my way, I will go shopping, I will figure out how to make more money.” Not one said, “I will stay indoors, I will just go to sleep, I will worry about my hair and my weight, I will not be good to myself and those around me.” No one said any of those things. Instead, the thousand slips of paper spoke of loving family, loving friends, being in the most beautiful places on Earth, making peace with all living beings and those we have needlessly harmed, waking up, and spreading as much peace and laughter, touch and honesty as possible in those last hours.

I laughed and cried and smiled as I read the answers. I realized then that going into the next millennium, we must live as if this were our last 24 hours—choosing the most honest and loving way at every moment. Perhaps the way to do this is to live a new golden rule, “Do unto others (all living beings) as you would have done unto you. Do not do unto others that which you would not want done unto you.” With this choice of loving and caring, our 24 hours will repeat itself day after day, week after week, year after year, and decade after decade.

Rae Sikora is Director of the Center for Compassionate Learning in Bluehill, Maine. Contact 207-667-1025; www.compassionateliving.org.

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