TheBanyanTree: Merlin

[Sachet]

> There is no more or less heartbroken, because when a heart is broken it
> doesn't work, and there are no degrees. It's not a competition.....

So profoundly true for so many things. I'm glad you spoke up on that other list, Neekia.






On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 6:51 PM, Monique Colver 
<monique.colver at gmail.com>wrote:
>> On another list yesterday there was talk of lost pets, dead pets, missing
>> pets, and someone said how sad she's been since her dog had died.
>>
>> It is sad.
>>
>> Someone else said she understood, she had a cat she'd been very fond of,
>> and she'd had to leave it at her brother's farm, out in the country,
>> because she couldn't take it where she was going (wherever that was), and
>> the cat had gone missing, and never been found again. She said she'd never
>> get over it.
>>
>> The first one woman responded with, "There's no way that's comparable with
>> losing a pet who dies! Your cat is still out there somewhere, while my dog
>> is dead and will never come back. You can't possibly understand what it's
>> like to lose a pet that's been with us so long and that we were so attached
>> to, and who suffered the last year of her life!"
>>
>> Really?
>>
>> I responded, because I'm unable to keep my mouth shut a fair amount of the
>> time, about how we can't compare pain. I can't say my pain is more or less
>> than your pain, and why would I? Why would I care? Does it make me feel
>> better to say I experience more pain, or does it make me feel worse to
>> think that no one could possibly understand the pain I'm going through? And
>> why? Does feeling more pain than anyone else give one special privileges?
>> Does it provide a degree of sympathy I wouldn't get otherwise? "Oh, I'm so
>> sorry," are we to reply, "Your pain is much greater than anything we've
>> experienced, and we are so sad for you."
>>
>> Perhaps I didn't phrase it quite like that, though I did say we can't
>> compare pain, just like we can't compare joy.
>>
>> The first woman said that if a pet of hers goes missing, she assumes that
>> someone needed them more, so it doesn't bother her nearly so much.
>>
>> "To conduct grisly experiments?" I wanted to ask, but didn't. Who knows
>> what happens to a missing pet?
>>
>> Instead I said, "That's you, and as for me, I'd worry incessantly about
>> what was happening to them -- were they suffering, were they hurt, were
>> they lost? Everyone is different."
>>
>> The second woman responded this morning and said we were a bunch of
>> insensitive mean people and she flounced off. She said we are also
>> egotistical.
>>
>> I responded that yes, I am quite egotistical. She would be too if she were
>> me. Too bad for her she's not.
>>
>> Okay, I didn't say that, other than in my head.
>>
>> We can't compare pets. My pets happen to be the most fabulous pets on the
>> planet, and the fact that you think you have the most fabulous pets on the
>> planet doesn't affect my opinion at all. I still know I have the best pets.
>> And when one of us loses a pet, we will be heartbroken, whether said pet
>> dies, goes missing, is taken by aliens (of the interplanetary variety.
>> There is no more or less heartbroken, because when a heart is broken it
>> doesn't work, and there are no degrees. It's not a competition (which is
>> what I said to the rude woman who thought her pain superior), and if it
>> were, no one wins, so what's the point?
>>
>> My pets are under orders to stay the same as they are, and to stop aging.
>> Since they disobey all my other orders ("Honey, stop digging in my trash!"
>> "Ash, get out of the kitchen!") I'm pretty sure they'll disobey this one
>> too. But I have to feel like I gave it a shot, don't I?
>>
>>
>>
>> Monique Colver
>>