Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "compassion"
The Hidden Faces of Holidays
This is about you: oppressed, invisible, silent. Nameless, undesired, unworthy. Unwanted. FACELESS. You – banished from your homes and you – caged into your existence.
You are turned into a burden of our society. (Not by your own will.) Because you are poor; once you had a meaningful life and now you are fading shadows crawling up and down our streets, unwashed and dirty packages stacked and locked behind razor wires with just a vision of freedom you once possessed in your vanished and broken homes, with destiny that doesn't force its smile upon you any more. The future for you is uncertain like the drops of sudden rain burned and turned into vapor on the hot desert sand.
The faces of the other you are even harder to count, harder to see. You multiply us by tens and hundreds of times. We love you from a distance. But we don't actually care about you, acknowledge you. We love the taste of you much better than the lives you were given and granted as something of yours and something that belongs to you only; we love your blood and fear on our tongue rather than the gentle pulse of your beating hearts on the soft palms of our hands.
Your babies are cute and our babies love to play with them. They relate and understand each other with the uncorrupted knowledge of innocent souls who know that they belong to and create one and the same universe. Though, that universe doesn't bring the same fate to all of them when, even at holidays and the time of universal joy, they go silently into the darkness of their lives, guided by the hands of our humanity. Their tears, their cries, pain and agony are hushed with our celebration of life and good wishes.
Something is very wrong. I look for compassion, kindness, gentleness and goodness, but they are masked behind our smiling faces. Sparkled into nothingness by the lights of fireworks and myriads of wishes. As the world sinks its teeth deeper into the soft and ripe flesh of celebration, I feel the ever thicker presence of death spilling like a fog everywhere, all over the world. Hiding both sad and smiling faces, hiding everyone and everything, like there is no single life left on this planet. Like the light is completely turned off.
Before the plates are cleaned, even before the tables are set and candles lit, I humbly beg you to consider celebrating kindness, compassion and life. Because there is so much more to it, so much more than a sparkle of champagne, clinging of glasses, smeared rouge and loosened ties after the long-hour night and tipsy heads.
Once we are back to our old selves, we realize that there is kindness in us and that there is the need for good deeds towards others. Homeless, poor, refugees, animals. Those abandoned, forgotten and faceless ones. Those we refuse to acknowledge, those whose existence we deny because they are far from our hearts.
Except, they don't have to be. Not now. Not ever. Particularly not in the days of celebration. They can be celebrated and celebrating with us, by our decisions and resolutions that will last for a long lifetime. Ours and theirs.
Thank you for choosing compassion, kindness, goodwill and empathy. Thank you for opening your hearts to human and animal suffering. And thank you for doing something about it.
Happy holidays!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan
You are turned into a burden of our society. (Not by your own will.) Because you are poor; once you had a meaningful life and now you are fading shadows crawling up and down our streets, unwashed and dirty packages stacked and locked behind razor wires with just a vision of freedom you once possessed in your vanished and broken homes, with destiny that doesn't force its smile upon you any more. The future for you is uncertain like the drops of sudden rain burned and turned into vapor on the hot desert sand.
The faces of the other you are even harder to count, harder to see. You multiply us by tens and hundreds of times. We love you from a distance. But we don't actually care about you, acknowledge you. We love the taste of you much better than the lives you were given and granted as something of yours and something that belongs to you only; we love your blood and fear on our tongue rather than the gentle pulse of your beating hearts on the soft palms of our hands.
Your babies are cute and our babies love to play with them. They relate and understand each other with the uncorrupted knowledge of innocent souls who know that they belong to and create one and the same universe. Though, that universe doesn't bring the same fate to all of them when, even at holidays and the time of universal joy, they go silently into the darkness of their lives, guided by the hands of our humanity. Their tears, their cries, pain and agony are hushed with our celebration of life and good wishes.
Something is very wrong. I look for compassion, kindness, gentleness and goodness, but they are masked behind our smiling faces. Sparkled into nothingness by the lights of fireworks and myriads of wishes. As the world sinks its teeth deeper into the soft and ripe flesh of celebration, I feel the ever thicker presence of death spilling like a fog everywhere, all over the world. Hiding both sad and smiling faces, hiding everyone and everything, like there is no single life left on this planet. Like the light is completely turned off.
Before the plates are cleaned, even before the tables are set and candles lit, I humbly beg you to consider celebrating kindness, compassion and life. Because there is so much more to it, so much more than a sparkle of champagne, clinging of glasses, smeared rouge and loosened ties after the long-hour night and tipsy heads.
Once we are back to our old selves, we realize that there is kindness in us and that there is the need for good deeds towards others. Homeless, poor, refugees, animals. Those abandoned, forgotten and faceless ones. Those we refuse to acknowledge, those whose existence we deny because they are far from our hearts.
Except, they don't have to be. Not now. Not ever. Particularly not in the days of celebration. They can be celebrated and celebrating with us, by our decisions and resolutions that will last for a long lifetime. Ours and theirs.
Thank you for choosing compassion, kindness, goodwill and empathy. Thank you for opening your hearts to human and animal suffering. And thank you for doing something about it.
Happy holidays!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan
The Practical Guide to the World of Compassion and Kindness
The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble by Ingrid NewkirkMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
The review for the book The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble by Ingrid Newkirk I first wrote on December 28, 2009 and posted on Animal Friends Croatia web page. But there is never enough exposure for good readings and remarkable people, so I decided to repost it here as well.
When I first opened a copy of the latest book by Ingrid Newkirk, The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble, after receiving it by mail, a colleague of mine stood behind me and gazed at it intently. I did not know what he was thinking, I just felt his presence and waited for him to speak his mind or tell me what he needed from me. A few more seconds drifted by before he stated, "I do not know where she finds time to write a book."
I didn't think when I replied to him, "Discipline," like it was self-understanding. But on second thought, I do not think I said something wrong. It takes lots of discipline to be a full-time active advocate for animals and also to find time to do something besides it – like writing a book.
Maybe it won't make much sense to many, but if we are speaking in terms of advocating for animals, discipline for me equals to commitment, dedication, empathy, compassion, kindness, love, perseverance, and patience.
This is what one needs to be a good animal advocate. These are qualities we must treasure if we want to successfully finish our marathon race. And these are features I find in Ingrid Newkirk.
Unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure of meeting Ingrid personally. Exchanging emails with her from time to time is always such a pleasant and encouraging experience though. Whether they carry a concise message as praise in their subject or explain something in length, I always look forward to them. And if I have to say something about Ingrid's latest book, I cannot do that without saying something about Ingrid, too.
Each book, each story, each line reflects the personality of its author. The same is with Ingrid and her books. During the last couple of years I read three of her books: 250 Things You Can Do to Make Your Cat Adore You, Kids Can Save the Animals: 101 Easy Things to Do and Free the Animals. Meanwhile, I read plenty of other books about animals and animal rights. However, Free the Animals along with Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust by Charles Patterson are probably the two books that left the deepest impact on me.
The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble closely follows their footsteps, disarming me with its simplicity, practicality and outstanding message.
I've been an animal advocate for eight years already, after I dropped out of environmental protection. Throughout these years I learned a lot about animals, animal advocacy, and animal rights in general, but also about myself. Most of that knowledge I as a person and my group as a whole owe to PETA and Ingrid Newkirk. Animal Friends Croatia realized many successful campaigns and actions studying PETA's strategy and the way of reasoning, while Ingrid Newkirk proved herself to be more than just a good adviser: she was a real trooper, a helping hand that guided us and brought us into safety when our heads were below the water. Truly, lots of credits for our achievements and victories surely go to Ingrid Newkirk and PETA.
This is why The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble is such an important book. It gives the reader an ocean full of practical advice on how to advocate for animals and how to treat them in everyday life, but it also talks to us. It communicates with us, page after page, sharing with us the rich experience of its author in saving animals and fighting for their rights.
On some 300 pages Ingrid guides us as gently as possible through all imaginable aspects of animal exploitation and abuse. Without holding back anything, she teaches us who are animals and why we should respect them and treat them as our equals. Yes, there are moments when she mercilessly tightens her grip around our hearts when she narrates the true stories of animals who suffered through the worst possible ordeals humans bestowed upon them. Remember the story about Makara the rhino; a downer cow at a stockyard in Kentucky; a polar bear named Gus housed in New York's Central Park Zoo; the Berosini orangutans; a seagull tangled up in fishing line in a Virginia park; Billy, a timid little Silver Spring monkey; a stray dog named Aurora; a hound dog named Cindy; and Hannah, the sheep, to name just a few? Yes, this is Ingrid's way: she shakes us out of our boots, she brings tears to our eyes and makes our hearts bleed. But once we compose ourselves again, we realize that we are not so helpless as we thought we were. There is hope for us, which means there is hope for animals, too. In the "What You Can Do" sections, Ingrid takes enormous efforts in going into the tiniest detail in order to show us that we can make a difference – a huge difference with little effort. And maybe here lies the greatest value of this book. "What You Can Do" is simply priceless if we really set our heart in doing something for animals
Yes, we can make a change, even with the smallest thing. We do not have to be in the front lines of animal rights advocacy doing demos, protests, vegan tastings, holding public speeches, lectures, or going nude for the animals' sake. No, we can sit comfortably in the warmth of our home, pick up the phone and dial our favorite radio station, call the TV news and leave a comment about something we just saw, write a letter to the newspaper editor or browse the Internet posting our comments, or maybe even create an animal rights blog or web page.
True, it is easy to be an animal advocate nowadays. The best thing is that whatever we do, each action we take, every bit of information we share with someone else, everything counts. Nothing's in vain. But the easier it is for us to become an animal advocate, the greater the obligation we have to really become one. There is no excuse for being passive, there is no excuse for doing nothing while animals suffer and are killed. There is no excuse for closing our eyes before the truth and ingenuity of Ingrid's advice. There is no excuse for closing our hearts after closing the cover of The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble, shutting out and denying the cries of those who seek our help.
It is very simple: compassion and kindness are the keys to both human and animal liberation. When we liberate ourselves from the chains of tradition and old-fashioned views, the light that will shine up within us will liberate others, too. Let us light up our hearts and carry our torches in lighting up the hearts and lives of our fellow creatures.
Please, let this remarkable book written by a remarkable woman touch you with its kind message. Let it guide you into a world where there shall be no more death, sorrow, crying, or pain. For anyone.
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
View all my reviews
Bernard Jan
Peace, Love, Empathy
These are the days when we are full of love and show more kindness than anytime during the year.
These are the days when we want peace and happiness to everyone, when we are ready to give getting nothing in return.
But these are also the days when we take the most. When we deprive others of their happiness and peace, when out of ignorance or lack of care we sit at the family table and take their lives.
Opening our hearts—to everyone—is important. We are so capable of grand and beautiful things and, truth is, we can live and be happy without taking from our animal families.
Please think before you choose your meal and show them mercy. Join me in honoring life and fill this world with kindness and love for everyone. Don’t let any animal be killed for our celebrations and festivities, we are all entitled to freedom and happiness.
My love to you and your beloved ones and every single creature that swims, flies, crawls and walks the earth.
Best wishes and happy holy-and-every-day!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan
These are the days when we want peace and happiness to everyone, when we are ready to give getting nothing in return.
But these are also the days when we take the most. When we deprive others of their happiness and peace, when out of ignorance or lack of care we sit at the family table and take their lives.
Opening our hearts—to everyone—is important. We are so capable of grand and beautiful things and, truth is, we can live and be happy without taking from our animal families.
Please think before you choose your meal and show them mercy. Join me in honoring life and fill this world with kindness and love for everyone. Don’t let any animal be killed for our celebrations and festivities, we are all entitled to freedom and happiness.
My love to you and your beloved ones and every single creature that swims, flies, crawls and walks the earth.
Best wishes and happy holy-and-every-day!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan
My Very Best Wishes (with Hopes for a Happier World)
To all my friends, followers, readers, and reviewers. To all of you who got in touch with me in this year and to all of you who will read this.
I wish you all the best for the holidays and many days after. I wish you to spend them with the people you love and who give you their unconditional love; surrounded with warmth, happiness, kindness and with no worry on your mind. Whether you spend them with your family, friends or alone, let them be full of all good things that make this life worth living.
I don’t have big plans for the end of this year. I will work on my book, read books from my huge reading list, spend time at home with my parents and my online friends. I like to keep it quiet, cozy and relaxing, doing things I like best, because books are my addiction. This passion keeps burning inside me no matter what time of day or year. My other passion is spreading kindness and compassion to and for those in need, especially animals. Even in times of celebration and holidays I will keep thinking on them, wishing I can do more for them to ease their misery and suffering. There are days when being a vegan doesn’t seem enough, when I feel I can do and should do more like jump in the catastrophic fires that are devastating Australia and be a protective shield between devouring flames and animals and people losing their lives and homes there. And it’s not only Down Under. It’s like that all over our beautiful planet!
Do you sometimes feel the same? Do you feel bad, frustrated and angry seeing our planet going from bad to worse as it spins madly toward the cataclysm, and those in power to make a change do nothing or ignore it? They have the power, yes, but they are not the only ones. We have the power too, you and me. If we do something on our small personal level, things will move forward. And if others join us, we can do bigger, greater things. We can change the world, I firmly believe that.
So, why not start now, during these holidays? Why not end this year and begin a new year with small acts of kindness? It’s actually very simple. Having a plant-based Christmas dinner or New Year’s party can mean a lot to animals who suffer, and it won’t cost us anything. It will open our windows to the world of new flavors and smells, the best ones being kindness, compassion, and empathy. Those are the flavors I enjoy for 18 years already and they feel so good. The best things I’ve ever tasted! You’d give me a great joy if you tried them too and let me know how you liked them. One thing is certain: they get better with time because the more we taste them the more we heal our planet. It’s the best natural cure our Earth can get from us. And, to be honest, it needs it!
Thank you for spreading love and kindness, thank you for having a big and compassionate heart. Thanks for all good things you will do for others in the last moments of this year and for good things you will continue doing in 2020.
Hopefully, it brings us all many memorable and pleasant moments, happiness, good health, and great books.
Much love and my very best wishes!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Follow me on Twitter.
Bernard Jan
I wish you all the best for the holidays and many days after. I wish you to spend them with the people you love and who give you their unconditional love; surrounded with warmth, happiness, kindness and with no worry on your mind. Whether you spend them with your family, friends or alone, let them be full of all good things that make this life worth living.
I don’t have big plans for the end of this year. I will work on my book, read books from my huge reading list, spend time at home with my parents and my online friends. I like to keep it quiet, cozy and relaxing, doing things I like best, because books are my addiction. This passion keeps burning inside me no matter what time of day or year. My other passion is spreading kindness and compassion to and for those in need, especially animals. Even in times of celebration and holidays I will keep thinking on them, wishing I can do more for them to ease their misery and suffering. There are days when being a vegan doesn’t seem enough, when I feel I can do and should do more like jump in the catastrophic fires that are devastating Australia and be a protective shield between devouring flames and animals and people losing their lives and homes there. And it’s not only Down Under. It’s like that all over our beautiful planet!
Do you sometimes feel the same? Do you feel bad, frustrated and angry seeing our planet going from bad to worse as it spins madly toward the cataclysm, and those in power to make a change do nothing or ignore it? They have the power, yes, but they are not the only ones. We have the power too, you and me. If we do something on our small personal level, things will move forward. And if others join us, we can do bigger, greater things. We can change the world, I firmly believe that.
So, why not start now, during these holidays? Why not end this year and begin a new year with small acts of kindness? It’s actually very simple. Having a plant-based Christmas dinner or New Year’s party can mean a lot to animals who suffer, and it won’t cost us anything. It will open our windows to the world of new flavors and smells, the best ones being kindness, compassion, and empathy. Those are the flavors I enjoy for 18 years already and they feel so good. The best things I’ve ever tasted! You’d give me a great joy if you tried them too and let me know how you liked them. One thing is certain: they get better with time because the more we taste them the more we heal our planet. It’s the best natural cure our Earth can get from us. And, to be honest, it needs it!
Thank you for spreading love and kindness, thank you for having a big and compassionate heart. Thanks for all good things you will do for others in the last moments of this year and for good things you will continue doing in 2020.
Hopefully, it brings us all many memorable and pleasant moments, happiness, good health, and great books.
Much love and my very best wishes!
BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Follow me on Twitter.
Bernard Jan
