I try to stay positive, but it’s a constant challenge. I get drawn into all the conflict and negativity that surrounds me – in the world arena, politics, culture, and my own city and neighborhood.
I have concluded that the only wise response is to focus on what’s good in the present moment and stay tuned to the “love channel.”
Spiritual writer Anne Lamott makes a compelling case for this approach in her latest book Somehow: Thoughts on Love.
Find the Right Frequency
Love, like gratitude, is a frequency that we can search for and tune into. The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence explains that gratitude is “not just a feeling outside your control that arrives willy-nilly. It’s more like a radio channel: you can choose at any time to tune in.”
Lamott describes love this way, too. “Maybe love is a radio station that we can tune to when we can turn away from the crack cocaine of news and the internet to Bach and sambas and ‘Taps,’ to melodious sonnets and the Beatles.”
This is where we find peace, solace, and inspiration. In fact, staying tuned in is the only way we can remain positive and hopeful in a mean and chaotic world.
Lamott recognizes how challenging this is. “Are love and compassion up to the stark realities we face at the dinner table, and down the street, and at the melting ice caps, or within Iranian nuclear plants and our own Congress?” she asks. Her answer is yes, somehow.
To find the right channel, Lamott suggests that we position ourselves in places where people are helping others in need. “You want to feel the physical, vibrational presence of Jesus on this side of things?” she asks. “Go sit in the waiting room someplace where public servants are tending to the most marginalized in our society.”
For me, that place is the cat shelter where I volunteer twice a week. Here I am surrounded by people performing countless acts of kindness and compassion as a matter of course.
Lots of People Care
Last week was Idaho Gives, a yearly program sponsored by the Idaho Non-Profit Center to raise awareness about and generate funds for the state’s many non-profit organizations. Thanks to this promotion, the shelter where I volunteer raised over $74,000 to support its mission.
We rely on the kindness of strangers to rescue and find homes for over 1000 cats and kittens every year. During the Idaho Gives campaign, we introduced the public to a few of these cats and the acts of love that saved their lives.
For example, a 12-year-old Persian cat named Maizee came to us in terrible shape, neglected for years in her previous home. She was anemic and malnourished and suffered from dental disease, an ear infection, and abscesses on two paws caused by overgrown nails. She could no longer groom herself because her coat was so badly matted.
The shelter provided dental surgery to remove all her teeth, treated her wounds and infections, and shaved off half a pound of hair. Slowly, with medical care and good nutrition, Maizee’s health improved, and her long calico coat began to grow back.
Maizee was adopted by a woman who was moved by the story of this elderly cat who had never been properly cared for. The adopter says she is now “queen of the castle” in a house with two other Persians and a dog. Maizee wears a handmade sweater to keep her warm until her long coat is completely restored, eats the highest quality cat food, and will make regular trips to a cat spa from now on for professional grooming.
There are many, many stories like this in which people respond to vulnerable animals with care and compassion. Only the details differ.
Whiskers, another 12-year-old cat, came to us with diabetes and feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), a chronic condition that weakens the immune system. He was obese and suffered from neuropathy in his feet.
Unlike humans, animals don’t dwell on their ailments or feel sorry for themselves. Whiskers acts like every other cat in the shelter, seeking pets and trying to jump into our laps despite his mobility issues. He has begun to respond positively to our love, along with medical treatment and a special diet.
Visitors who meet him fall in love with Whiskers and want to help. Recently, a woman called to pre-pay his adoption fee as a Mother’s Day gift for her mother, who is also a cat lover. Although they have their own cats and can’t adopt another one, they want to encourage someone else to take Whiskers home and provide the nurturing he needs and deserves.
I can’t think of a worthier cause or a better gift, can you?
Animals Bring Out the Best in Us
What happens in an animal shelter may have an even bigger impact than we realize. Carol Novello, past president of the Humane Society of Silicon Valley, believes that the human-animal bonding that takes place at a shelter can change the world.
This is because animals have a tremendous capacity for unconditional love and can ground us in “a relationship that’s good and true and solid and real. . .. Pets can help us evolve as people, because they give us a safe way to practice opening our hearts, and once we learn how to be open and empathetic with pets, we can become more compassionate with ourselves, better at being tender with others – and more inspired to contribute to humanity” (Mutual Rescue: How Adopting a Homeless Animal Can Save You, Too).
Novello uses the term “rescue effect” to explain the benefits of adopting a homeless or shelter animal, especially animals with special needs like Maizee and Whiskers. It can “create ripples of well-being that impact concentric circles of people—even total strangers.”
Who knows how many people will feel more loving and compassionate, and perhaps behave more lovingly toward others, after hearing the stories of these two elderly cats and the people who saved them?
Everybody Counts
The angry critics among us will say that there aren’t enough resources to help everybody, and the marginalized should help themselves. In the case of old, sick, or needy animals, they should be put out of their misery.
That is one point of view, and I’ve met people who hold it. But I disagree. I think the way we treat the most vulnerable among us is the truest test of our national character.
I prefer to think like Harry Bosch, a Los Angeles Police Department detective in the award-winning television series Bosch. Harry frequently champions the cause of the underdog in solving crimes. He believes that either “everybody counts, or nobody counts.” In other words, mercy, justice, love, kindness, and compassion belong equally to every living being, and that includes animals.
Can you imagine a world where nobody counts, and nothing matters? It would be a dystopian nightmare. In my world, everybody counts, and everything matters, even the tiniest expressions of love and kindness.
So, I invite you to tune in, delight in, and be inspired by the many acts of love that are constantly happening all around you. And stay tuned. There is more to come.
Written by: Ruth Ray Karpen
Ruth Ray Karpen is a retired English professor who now works as a freelance researcher and writer. She has published many books and articles on aging and old age, life story writing, and retirement. She also volunteers for a local animal shelter. In our series on Heart and Soul, she explores how later life, including the end of life, offers unique opportunities for emotional and spiritual growth.
On behalf of Smart Strategies for Successful Living, our sincerest appreciation goes to Ruth Ray Karpen for her contribution to the heart and soul of living and aging.
