Dear Ross:

When you see the animals, “completely at our mercy and the cruel way people treat them”, does it trigger your own suffering when you were a child, having been completely at the mercy of the adults in your life?

Young children are helpless. They are at the mercy of their parents, the adults that are there.

anita

Dear Ross,

You might be focusing too much on suffering. Certainly, humans had domesticated animals, but that doesn’t mean that animals can’t coexist with humans in peace. There are many families out there who view dogs and cats are part of their family and would grieve their passing.

So rather than the fact that animals are suffering, your mind might be too zoomed in the ‘fact’ that there is suffering. And you might be able to relieve some of their suffering, but that doesn’t mean that they stop suffering. As long as you are alive, there will always be some kind of suffering, regardless of what anyone hope for. And when people do suffer, the best thing to do is to do what you can. The suffering might pass or it might not, but when you stew in the fact that there is suffering, you stuck yourself in a loop of ‘suffering = no control over it = can’t do anything about it = depression about hopelessness = suffering’ over and over again.

So try not to focus on the suffering part, but on what you can do at the moment.

Good luck.