Toffee died this week. She was a rabbit and she’d been through a lot. It’s not what they achieve or their practical input to our lives that make animals or people valuable, it is much more often the influence they have over the way that we behave and think about ourselves and our life. That’s why there were lessons I learned from a rabbit.
Dealing with adversity
When she was just a baby she would be left to run free in the garden and, when we were trying to catch her one night she ran straight into my son and broke an arm which was subsequently removed. So from that day she embarked upon life as an amputee, but it seemed to make little difference to either her humour or her agility.
Her brother was a constant companion. Whenever you needed to find her you just needed to look for him and she would, as sure as anything, be close by, and then one day, a fox killed him. We didn’t think she would last long on her own, convinced she would die of a broken heart. But she didn’t.
It may seem odd to suggest that we can learn about adversity from an animal but they handle it so well. Despite their fragile furriness there is something of immense strength which beats within them. A refusal to be cowed by circumstance and a determination to carry on regardless of the cruel blows dealt by fate.
Teaching us about responsibility
Trying to get children to clean out a rabbit hutch without constant reminder is much like trying to knit a comfortable sweater out of a thick fog. At first.
As the years swung by I noticed that there was a shift between the self centred blindness of childhood giving way to children altogether more conscious of others needs, including those of a small brown rabbit.
Taking care of something creates a seismic shift in us, just ask any parent. Perhaps, because of such responsibility, we are able more easily to acknowledge how fortunate we are to be able to look after ourselves and how fragile the line is between doing so and choosing not to in wilful abandonment. Perhaps that, in some way, makes us more grateful for life itself.
The brevity of life
We all worry about death at some point. In his wonderful book, “Staring At The Sun” renowned psychotherapist Irvin Yalom writes; “Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.” When it comes to our pets this transition plays out before us in a much shorter time frame. We experience them as babies, adults, elderly and then, gone. We are, whether we like it or not, learning about our own progression through life, reminded of its brevity, and so encouraged to make of it as much as we possibly can.
Toffee liked to sit under the drooping apple tree and systematically chew the leaves from the low branches. I preferred to stand upright and pick the fruit, but in essence we were just the same, making the very best of what we had within reach.
Touching us with genuine but simple joy
This week I had a conversation with a client about finding peace and happiness in amongst the cacophony of modern life. There is so much distraction, so much static and so much temptation to look for something vast and exciting to make us feel whole. Amazing holidays, astonishing sex, astounding experiences. Maybe we spend too much time looking in the wrong places. Maybe it is with simplicity and space that we find most of what we truly desire.
Research shows that pets have a significant positive impact on emotional wellbeing. This must be one of the most basic and easily accessible ways to feel good. It was indeed simple to feel a sense of peace and joy when stroking Toffee the rabbit and it was absolutely genuine.
Experiencing the helplessness of release
I remember when my old dog Toby reached the end of his life. He arrived, aged six months, from a rescue centre. He had a pin in his leg where his previous owners had let him run, as a tiny puppy, wild amongst the traffic. Inevitably he got hit and, I suspect it wasn’t his only experience of being struck.
After seventeen years one day his legs gave way. He looked up at me with his greying beard and glassy eyes as if to say “Can you just help me out of here Graham?” So I did.
As I stroked his head at the vets he closed his eyes for the last time and I experienced an abject helplessness in synergy with his release. All at once feeling the compassion of setting him free from pain and frustration combined with a torrid fight against accepting that I had to let my friend go.
So much in life requires us to let go without even a shred of our bodies or minds wanting to, and the absence of control so evident. But it might be that the constant reminder of how little we control it at least brings us to the point where we can more peacefully accept it.
Grasping the concept and power of unconditional love
Rabbits are not like dogs. Rabbits don’t chase sticks or jump up at you when you come home from work. Rabbits don’t really show much in the way of emotion. Sometimes they run up the garden when you want to bring them down the garden, and sometimes, when they are small, they get themselves stuck underneath the decking just as you are about to go and play tennis, and then refuse to emerge until you have taken up the decking to expose their furry arses hunkering down as if nothing is amiss. In some ways you would think it hard to love a rabbit.
We crave unconditional love but we rarely experience it. In order to love a rabbit we are learning the importance of giving without any expectation of return. This is a precious lesson. To show care, affection and love just because something or someone requires it is a gift of huge proportion.
So while Toffee was cute and sweet and furry, and while she was an excellent way of using up vegetable peelings, and even though it seems only moments ago that I was hiding her and Scratchy (her brother) from the eager eyes of two much smaller children one Christmas, it won’t only be her inexhaustible ability to be a rabbit which I will remember. It will also be all that I know we learned from her.
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