DAY 3: Of Mice and Crying
Thursday, January 19, 2023
WFIW of the Day: Yesterday was a clusterfuck of chores… none of which were really WFIW to do… but I DID choose them because they distracted me from feeling other things. So, oh well. Who said doing whatever the fuck I wanted would be easy??
Last night, I found my teenage girl sobbing alone at the dinner table.
She was reading the high-school-English-class staple “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck and barely a chapter in, Lennie the dumb-witted giant smothers a mouse in his hands, petting it with too much love and possession.
I remember reading this same passage when I was a teenager and feeling a slight hitch of “oh that poor mouse!”
Not my daughter. She read those words and merged completely with the fictional rodent and knew, with certainty, how the poor thing must have felt. Trapped, frantic, overwhelmed with panic and mortal fear. Then, pain as it was slowly crushed.
She felt it all. Imagine feeling it all…
And she didn’t stop there. She started thinking about, not just this imaginary mouse, but ALL the hypothetical mice in the world.
She googled “Do mice feel fear and pain?”
So, when I found her at the dining room table, she was deep down a mouse hole of pain.
On her computer screen? Articles titled “Mice feel EACH OTHER’S fear and suffering.” Dozens of images of adorable, plump little creatures grooming and comforting each other.
She explained to me, with red eyes and real pain:
“I just keep imagining whenever I have to go to the doctor’s and get a shot and I feel so scared, but I’m trapped and I can’t go anywhere and the needle is coming and suddenly I can’t move.”
“The mice in all the testing labs must feel that way, too.”
I tried to explain to her that animals do feel pain and fear… but they don’t make up stories in their heads about it like us humans do. So their pain is cleaner. They don’t add the layer of suffering on top that goes, “Well, this is how the world is, a miserable place. Of course this would happen to me. I’m a worthless, unlovable creature who gets all the crap in life.”
But mostly, I hugged her and agreed with her that it WAS sad and that I loved this part of her so much.
This part of her I can only understand intellectually. Because I DON’T feel what other people and animals feel.
I have a fortified defensive perimeter around the feeling parts of my brain. I have the knowledge that mice get tortured in labs, but I do not know their pain. I can read about horrific things happening on the other side of the world and say, “Oh that’s so tragic.” But it does not cripple me with sadness.
I guess that would make me a kickass asset in a zombie apocalypse. If it came down to butchering animals for food, I’d feel an initial repulsion, but I suspect I’d get over it quickly and just get the job done.
I don’t think my daughter would do very well in a movie about the undead.
But in this world of the living, her empathy is a goddamn superpower.
Her empathy is why she can’t stand to eat animals. She sees a slice of bacon and can’t help but experience the pain of factory farming, as if it was happening to her.
That makes her the most powerful agent of change.
Because she’s not a vegetarian out of some forced sense of obligation to the planet, or because it’s the “right” thing to do. She’s vegetarian because eating animals just FEELS WRONG to her.
It’s going to be hard for her, taking in all the shit that’s wrong in the world. It’ll be hard to feel all of that.
When I found her at the dining room table and understood why she was crying, I felt a stab of panic… a compulsion to try and protect her from all of it.
But then I remembered… it’s ok for her to feel pain. It will only turn into suffering if she feels like that SHE is wrong because of it.
She’s not wrong. She’s holy.
She’s divine.
With Love,
Shinah
P.S. - Writing each morning is starting to feel like a refuge.