When I Cry For Others, Part of Me Cries For Myself.

I just found out that one of my parents’ dogs was put down – advanced lung cancer. They’d only had her 9 months – an old battered rescue dog. The majority of that time I wasn’t even living in the house with her, and even when I was, it’s not like we formed some super close bond. She wasn’t my dog, though I suppose because she was part of the family I became attached.

It still hit me a bit when I found out – I still welled up. Partly that’s because I’m a soft bastard, and I do get easily attached. Someone I’ve become linked to will never be there again. So there’s an element of loss there. Part of it is I don’t like to think about anything small and cute suffering that fate. Though I still eat meat, so it’s not like I’m some kind of compassionate animal lover.

But I guess a part of it is just being confronted once more with the reality of death. That every being will, as an inevitable consequence of biology and age, experience their own bodies fail and turn against them, and the panic and desperation that this can generate. The suffering that comes from the realisation that something is terribly wrong with the thing you rely on to continue to exist.

That’s the natural punchline to every life. And a part of me wants to avoid that – by controlling the experience. If I could go out calmly, free of pain, tranquil, then perhaps non-existence wouldn’t seem so terrifying.