Foreword
by Carl Safina

At five today as every day, an hour before dawn I felt our dogs jump onto the bed. They curled up by our feet and we all dozed a bit until my wife said “Good morning.” Our first words are their cue to start the day’s greeting and the licking. It’s a custom they started; we didn’t train it. And then it’s time to hit the floor and start the day. Every day they get us out of bed at dawn. And though that’s not always my favorite idea—if I’ve had a late night of writing or we’ve been out—dawn is always my favorite time of day. So I’m always grateful that they get us going. Downstairs they get let out; the coffee goes on. They get let in and fed. Right after they eat they seek us out and seem to thank us, and then they rest while I fill the bird feeders, feed our rescued parrot. Then we usually make breakfast, often sharing a bit with them or letting them lick up leftovers. And by then it’s time to let our chickens out. The chickens are not in a rush to venture out at dawn; that’s when the hawks hunt and the last fox goes to sleep. So they wait inside, and when I see them appear in their screen coop the dogs and I all go out, I open the coop, and our hens scurry to the back porch steps, where I feed them while the dogs take in the scene. In some years we’ve had added duties: an orphaned squirrel or raccoon, or a baby owl found fallen and near death. Healing them, their need and seeming appreciation of our care, their feeling comfortable and safe in our presence; this is a great honor and a daily lesson.

The lesson they refresh for me daily is: we are alive, now. They remind me to live present and ready to appreciate what comes our way. They break us through the hurt and grief and gloom that humans create for ourselves, the disappointments and disillusionments. They, like we, come into the world with none of it. In your opportunity to be kind to them, they repay with daily reminding of how pure and innocent living beings can be with each other. If we choose.

After everyone is fed we may take the dogs to the beach—they love that—before we get to work. I love it too. Watching them run and chase and swim, getting wet and sandy, I realize afresh that they get us smiling more times a day than any single aspect of our life. They bless us with their mess. I often think of the words of my friend and hero Peter Matthiessen, who wrote in The Snow Leopard, “And it is a profound consolation, perhaps the only one, to this haunted animal that wastes most of a long and ghostly life wandering the future and the past on its hind legs, looking for meanings, only to see in the eyes of others of its kind that it must die.” What I see in the eyes of others not of my kind is: let’s live. Let’s just live.

In a world of wounds, the invitation into compassion is the greatest gift a human can be offered. The symphony that is the controlled chaos of our morning, whether it is the noise of the chickens or a sandy snout against my hip, awakens and lifts my spirit like music. It is our best route out of grief.

I am a scientist, but many scientists have long wrongly believed that only humans are conscious and can feel anything. That belief is unscientific. It is also an excuse for humans to abuse the non-humans among us. There is far too much of this. And of course there is far too much abuse of other people. Other animals are considered “brutes,” or “savage beasts.” But as Herman Melville noted in his great psychological classic, Moby-Dick, “There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.” Abuse of animals often goes hand in hand with abusive behavior toward people. Learning to treat animals with gentleness gentles people toward people too. Humaneness is good for humans and humanity as a whole.

The organizing principle of all biology is that all life is kin, related and genetically connected down through billions of years of unbroken chains of ancestors and living descendants. Many of our genes have been on Earth for hundreds of millions of years. Think of it this way: the physical similarities you see in other species—eyes, ears, skeletons, organs, heartbeats—carry into similarities we can’t see in brains and their functioning. But you can see the functioning of minds in the logic of behaviors. And more formally, behavioral neuroscience has come light-years. Researchers in these branches of science have looked at brains as they function, in MRI machines and using other modern techniques. They have watched dogs’ brains light up when shown photos of people and dogs they know, and watched the brains of sleeping rats as they dream. There is simply no question, and there is plenty of proof, that their minds are generally as similar to our own minds, as are their bodies. In light of so much new evidence, many scientists now agree that the scientific reality is: everything in the living world is on a continuous range, and this includes the similarities in the nervous systems of various kinds of creatures, and thus in their mental functions and emotional capacities.

When we lose a loved one, including a loved pet, we grieve. And some animals grieve, too. Any animal capable of emotional bonding shows grief when you’d expect it. Grief isn’t solely about life or death; it’s mostly about loss of companionship, loss of presence. Author Barbara J. King says that when two or more animals have shared a life, “Grief results from love lost.”

We know that humans can enjoy life and love or miss companions. The remaining problem is that we tend to deny, or mistrust, the idea that any other creature can. This is a great gap in our appreciation and understanding of who we are and who we are here with on this only known living planet.

Albert Einstein said our task is to “widen our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Unity of need becomes unity of purpose. To deflect disaster, this is where we must be headed next.

And if you’d like to know what’s in it for you, Confucius is credited with saying, “He who wishes to secure the good of others, has already secured his own.” Dr. Albert Schweitzer observed, “One thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”

Charles Darwin recognized that “The simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to the men of all nations and races . . . our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused until they are extended to all sentient beings.”

There is a spiritual component here, even for the non-religious. The ability to feel along with another is the minimum standard of religiosity, “because in compassion,” says the former nun and author Karen Armstrong, “we de-throne ourselves from the center of our world.”

The geometry of human progress is an expanding circle of compassion. Each time people like Copernicus, Darwin, and Einstein have widened the circle—moving us farther from the center of the universe, the center of time, the apex of creation, we got a better, more realistic view of who we are. We understood a little better that we are not alone, that we have company here. Each of us must learn this for ourselves, and so progress is slow.

Expanded views make us more civilized. But being civilized gets us only so far. The challenge now is to become more humanized. It may seem ironic but caring for other animals helps to humanize us. Humans have the capacity for compassion, so acting compassionately fulfills our human potential. The greatest realization is that all life is one. Over my lifetime, living with, studying, and working with many other animals in their world and ours has only broadened and deepened—and reaffirmed—my impression of our shared life and of the rich gifts offered by closeness and care for the other-than-humans among us.

In the pages that follow, Aysha Akhtar expands and expounds this great potential. She illuminates the above by sharing stories of caring, and yes of abuse, and of grieving. But above all, these stories are about recovery, renewal, and hope. Be soothed by these stories, and the shared destiny and healing that takes place within these pages. Then consider how you yourself might find a way to help heal another. This is how we will heal the world, one life at a time.