perspectives

when it comes to being involved in animal rescue, it is important to realize there will be differing opinions about pretty much everything. opinions/beliefs/standards of care are based on each individuals perspective...ie..life experience, education/knowledge base, society's mores, personal goals, dreams and even fears.

as a rescuer, living side by side with multitudes of various types of animals..i can guarantee that my views are significantly different than most. this does not make my views wrong or visa versa..it simply means we can look at something similar but see something totally different.

all of us have a unique and individual lens thru which we see things.

this is important to realize because many conflicts in rescue occur simply because i or you or someone has a lens that is shaped differently than what we consider to be "right.".

there is no way on earth that i could do rescue to this extent, to this level if i viewed animals like most everyone else. my lens has a lifetime of bending, of shaping, of minuscule adjustments from every moment of living. and the interesting thing is the lens thru which i view rescue is not stagnant, formed now in stone...it is a living lens, continually changing, renewing, re-molding itself.

and so is yours.

we evolve in our ability to view the world around us if we resist the urge to shut and lock doors.

rescue cannot survive into a healthy future if it is unwilling to evolve. many of the things i did 10 or 20 years ago, i would not repeat today. heck..some of the shit i did yesterday i might not do-over today!

all of life is a learning process and as we learn our perspectives can and will significantly change. and maybe they change differently from those around us because we saw things in different ways.

and this is what makes living especially in rescue confusing..how can we all look at the very same elephant and see something so not the same?
someone sees something cute, sweet, heart warming or funny, someone else sees something heartrendingly sad, another sees a shit load of money or a way to feed their family, or the path to personal power, or something majestic and magical, or huge, dangerous and worthy of fear...some view the elephant as a symbol...of greatness? of freedom? of knowledge? of spirituality? of man's inhumanity to animals or as man's moral responsibility to shepherd and some just see the physical body of an elephant..not more, not less and leave it at that.

the way we all view the world differently creates a tapestry of textures, of colors, of lightness and shadows.
we can't fix what we can't change. and we can't change what we don't understand, and we can't understand if we refuse to have at least some respect...

for the different perspective that others may have.