Happy Monday & welcome to another day, here we go again. Another start to another week, like a never ending cycle. When we look at it like that life is meaningless and bleak; we have to move past that and beyond the monotony that we have gotten so used to seeing. This past weekend my husband and I went to the Los Angeles Zoo, twice actually. We got our Membership to the Zoo passes and they have already paid themselves off; I have to say I am pretty excited. I have always loved the Zoo, ever since I was a little kid. I could watch the animals for hours upon hours. While there is that part of me that hates seeing any living creature in captivity I know that the zoo has a lot of conservation efforts and really does a lot to try to protect these animals. You can see the effort and care throughout the park and it truly makes it a great experience.
It got me wondering though, while we were walking among the cages, why do we do this? Why do we put these animals on display and keep them in these cages that are so small and confined compared to their outside world? Why do we rope off and enclose those foreign and alien to us? Why do we take the things we can't understand or we can't control and put them in a box to study? Why? Because we want to understand. It is the same reason we have become obsessed with Reality TV and Vlogging online, as a culture we have become consumed with understanding. In and of itself this isn't a bad thing, as our means of communication have continued to progress it has propelled us into an unprecedented era of human evolution. Some things have never changed though - like the fact that we want so badly to understand our own place in the world that we look at the environment around us in order to place ourselves in a context we can comprehend. We like going to the zoo because we like being able to see and study those things that we can't directly understand. We see ourselves in those wild eyes and we seek some kind of understanding there. Some kind of hope, not just for them but for us as well.
Cages are designed by humans, we are the ones who build the contraptions of our own captivity and who trap those unwilling creatures we wish to watch and study and learn from. In the course of protecting the world around us and saving the things we ourselves place in danger we must remember that cages are nothing more than unnatural boundaries between us that serve only to keep us apart and keep from bringing us together. Of course at the zoo we need them to help keep the animals safe and separated, to keep them out of harms way and to keep them healthy. These cages, these limits, these boundaries all serve to protect these beautiful animals and conserve their way of life for generations to see and witness. Yet, look into the eyes of these animals as you watch them and see if you can truly tell what that look is trying to tell you. We are all living species on this planet and we are all a part of something much bigger than ourselves. We share this world with each other, human and animals alike. We go to the zoo to be transported around the globe to the most remote locations and get a glimpse into the most wild and exotic locations. These animals provide us a glimpse into the wild humanity that we have evolved from. We pay to go watch them so that we can get a better understanding of who we are, where we have come from and where we have yet to go. Our friends in the animal kingdom show us the warnings nature throws our way, the subtle roadblocks or speed bumps along the way to slow us down or cause us to take heed. We go to the zoo so that we can immerse ourself in a world we can only see in books and on television. In a world that we know to be true, but that seems to elude us at almost every point.
Those gates and fences though are dangerous, they are there for a reason in the zoo - so we can safely watch the animals in their enclosures and learn about the different creatures of this planet. We have to learn though how to see through these fences as the nothing that they are. They are no more than man made boundaries and we must learn to make our own fences in life that protect without isolating. There are many times in life that we build fences around ourselves, whether from the outside world or from someone in particular living in it. What we have to learn is that these fences only tend to isolate us and cut us off from the rest of the world. So often, so many times, when we think we are acting in self-defense we are actually acting in fear. Next time you visit the zoo watch the animals living there, like this beautifu orangutan mother and her baby who wouldn't stop looking right at me. In that moment, than instant, that connection - I knew why. I knew what that caged animal was saying to me - "Look, we're not so different you and me. Look, we're just the same."
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