We have all at some point been through low phases — because life comes in crests and troughs. But since each person has their own limits, who can tell whose pain was the worst, or how much is too much?
Talking it out, opening up to someone, therapy, and medication are all ways to explore dealing with the pain. Yet, each of these methods comes with some form of betrayal. An emotional trough is an extremely sensitive, personal, and dark space — one that any second person may not understand. And if even by mistake or chance they happen to misuse, or abuse, or even make a slight joke of this sensitivity, the trough for the vulnerable one can just get deeper. Intentionally or otherwise.
Another problem is that a trough is often self-dug, which makes it all the more inaccessible for a second or third party. A highly understated, but guaranteed, means to get out of the trough is to simply remove the “I” from your thought process. Animals play an amazing role in this. AMAZING is the word.
A pet, especially a rescued one, as it has been through his/her own trauma, is one of the ‘best companions’ during such a time. A mix of vulnerability, understanding, joy, and acceptance, they speak no words (which are anyway such a failed tool to allay the fears and insecurities of depressed people), bear no judgments, betray none of your emotions, and yet are there for you, ALWAYS.
Their sensitivity to your pain, especially that of dogs and cows (not to say that other animals or birds don’t or can’t display the same sensitivity, but these two I have personally experienced) is remarkable — whether you express your pain or not, and their responses even more so.
Sometimes when you’re in the doldrums, your dog coming and sitting beside you could be all that you need to know that someone cares TRULY. Or your cat friend coming and asking you for food, making you realize it depends ON YOU for its survival, can be the one thing you need to pull you out of THAT moment. So can being around a cow whose big, round eyes can look into your soul itself, and whose patience with naughty crows can give you a lesson in patience and tolerance.
It’s in a way contradictory, but it’s a fact that getting out of your own pain is easier when you look at someone else’s and do something about it. Through their so-called dependence on us to alleviate their pain, animals sometimes pull us out of ours. So that it’s not US saving them, but THEM saving us, in reality.
I have truly come to believe that intelligent answers fail to do for us what the silent company of another one of nature’s beings can. The answers can be simple too. Silence (not just external but internal also), nature, its beings, and karma are truly understated therapies. Do try this out.
