A fly buzzes around you, endlessly pestering you by landing on your hand, your cup, your neck, and without thinking you swat it against the table with a bit of rolled up magazine. A mosquito sits on your leg ready to drink, instantly you smash it against your thigh, tiny little blood stain where it sat. Ants crawl across the threshold to your home, so the spray comes out. Without warning a spider crawls across the floor, startles you to your feet and you stamp it into the floorboards as an automatic reaction. I ask you this, a simple question:
When was the last time you killed something without thinking about it?
Answer honestly, answer true. When was the last time you took the life of another living thing, and did so almost casually, on auto-pilot? The last time you squished a spider or swatted a fly against a windowpane? The last time you trapped a mouse, poisoned ants, sprayed a hornets nest?
I’m not going to judge you on your answer, I promise you this. I won’t think less of you, I won’t look down my nose and secretly shift my thoughts. You’ll be precisely as you are to me, loved, if you care about that, but answer and answer honestly. Just for you.
I cannot remember the last time I killed a single living thing. Genuinely.
Sometime in my youth I cannot precisely remember, I made up my mind I’d never take the life of another soul if I could possibly help it, I’d never place my life, my short existence, above anyone or anything else’s, and forced myself to hold to this. I say what I’m about to say with all honesty and not at all lightly, I say it truthfully because I owe you that: It changed EVERYTHING about my life, Everything.
Somewhere along the way, we humans were taught a very distorted view of the hierarchy of things on earth. We were given a pyramid, and told it was true. Humans on top, everything else in descending order below, mostly based on size or sometimes our perception of their intelligence or physical prowess, until the smallest and most seemingly insignificant are represented at the bottom. Humans first, humans most important, humans most worthy of living a life free of unnecessary threat or potential extermination. I ask you now: What if this is wrong? I ask you now, what does the world look like from anywhere else on that pyramid? On the bottom, on the ground?
Even from a different place on that pyramid, something remains true: in the simple act of being alive there is an ‘unavoidable harm’ that exists. That to stay alive means that somewhere along the way, something must perish to sustain us. The grain we cut and the microorganisms, the bugs, the rodents that die in the harvesting, the vegetables we pull from the earth, the meat we eat (should we choose to do so), it all means the death of a lifeform to sustain ours. The animal kingdom knows this, it survives on this same principle, though they know not the excess we know, they share not the greed we hold. The Dalai Lama, and the Tibetan Buddhism I follow has always championed in this, and in all ways, the “Middle Path,” and falls back, as it always does, on the intent behind our actions more so than the actions themselves.
There is unavoidable violence in our eating, in our sustaining of life. We cannot live without taking life, and this, this is the central grief and central grace of our lives. It’s a balance, and it always has been. I wish every day I could eat no meat, but with my health and intolerances, I simply cannot. Even as vegetarian, as the Dalai Lama always says, we must end life to save it. This is not what I mean. When I speak of taking life, I mean not the necessary consumption, I mean not the feeding of ourselves. I speak of something else, I speak of the frivolity of ending life that we deem unnecessary, that we deem extraneous, that we think matters less than ours. The unconscious and automatic taking of life that comes when we view ourselves as the shining gold beacon on top of the pyramid.
This is where I see the distinction between killing with presence versus killing by default. Again I go back to intention, and I think of Indigenous food traditions, the prayers offered over the bodies of the animals they take to sustain their families. I think of the energy shifted when tenderness and care are offered in exchange for the life-granting sacrifice. I speak only today of the ending of life by default, by that pyramid-granted hierarchy.
Something changes in us when we no longer live by this flawed belief. When we stop believing we’re more worthy of an unthreatened life than any other creature we share this place with. Yes, we cannot walk this earth without killing some creatures, but Yes, we can aim for consciousness of the act, not simply perfection of it. It matters not if you believe in reincarnation, as I do, it matters not if you believe in Heaven or Hell or Purgatory, though I do think those things push you even further into thinking the way I think. Here’s what I believe:
I believe somewhere, sometime, something will eat you. You will return to this earth and you will be consumed by some organism smaller than you can imagine right now. Your hierarchy will, inevitably, collapse. I believe this. We cannot stop death, we cannot stop in things shuffling off their mortal coils, but we can make changes, here, now.
We can choose to change our intentions, and in doing so, reap the rewards. We can choose to be a more active participant in the lives we take, but more, in the lives we save by refusing to place ourselves above them. This is not a loophole to the situation, it’s the entire spiritual practice that’s waiting, with no religious affiliation, that I advocate for. Intention, cautiousness, grace. What does this look like? Usher a spider onto a piece of paper and move it outside instead of stomping it out of fear. Catch the housefly or bee in a cup and usher it through a window, use humane deterrents like peppermint oil to keep mice from your spaces. Offer a small prayer, not to any god or goddess if you don’t wish, just to the animal itself before you eat, when eat you must. Be intentional, be purposeful, be mindful, and be connected.
By now you’re probably thinking, “Ok, you lured me in by saying that stopping killing things changed everything for you…how?!” I’ll do my best to explain.
The moment you stop placing yourself higher on the pyramid, the moment you refuse to see any life form as lower than your own, something truly shifts. I don’t know what else to call this other than Connection. True connection opens, and you start to feel something that almost feels like an electrical field between you and the creatures around us. It feels tangible, it feels real, and the longer you do it, the longer you honor them. You begin to notice more, you begin to see, and feel life around you. You see the trust grow in the creatures around us, you see them feel safer, you see them come nearer, stay longer when perched on fingertip or hand. You begin having interactions with larger and larger things, and maybe then a deer eats from your hand, a bird lands on your shoulder, maybe squirrels start coming to you to say hello, maybe you feed a muskrat, pet a timberwolf, or even feel the fur of a fox that feels safe enough to stand beside you. Maybe, just maybe, it grows so big that a baby deer, lost from its mother for a time, trusts you enough to follow you for hours, to take selfies with you, to snuggle into your legs and trust you to find it a safe space, hidden amongst the bushes and bramble, to wait for its Mom to return when you finally must part ways.
Life changes. You change. That’s what happens. You become something more than you were before, you become part of something bigger, part of something stronger, instead of some elevated piece high above the rest. You feel the great pulsing hum of everything and you understand, you truly understand, that beauty IS everywhere, in everything, and once everything sees YOU as part of it all, you’re connected and on the same damn team and it’s terrifyingly stunningly perfectly sublime. Life changes. You Change.
Every spider becomes a friend, a little buddy that takes care of the little insects that annoy you, without you even knowing so. Every housefly a visitor there to remind you of warmer days that are ahead, every bee a bringer of life and the only reason we’ve all that vegetarian food to even eat. Every creature, big or small, becomes a shipmate on some great Ark we can build every day to sail us through these often shitty times.
Stop ending the lives of things that spook you or startle you or ick you out a little bit. Try, for a week, for a month, see how you feel. Look closer. See the beauty in all you share this world with.
The deer will come and will feel safe by your side. You will finally understand.
I love you all.
Be good.
