The Beauty and Peril of Connection
Image from Wikimedia
I sat awake, propped up on my elbows at two in the morning, and I scrolled through my phone. I hoped that, somehow, the repetitiveness of social media would help me fall back asleep. Instagram. Facebook. Twitter. Videos. Advertisements. Pictures. All just a blur.
But, then, something caught my eye — a photo of two orangutans, mother and child, lounging together, the child on the mother’s belly, their heads turned sideways, their eyes brown, wide, human. I could see our shared lineage so clearly in their faces. All those many generations of hominids who lived beneath the open sky, and hunted and stalked and foraged and called the moonlight sacred.
I felt that I could stand face to face with these orangutans, and understand clearly the life in their eyes. Even if I knew nothing of science or evolution, I would find those faces familiar; I would know intrinsically that they could feel, and love, and mourn.
And, sitting there at two in the morning, staring at a smart phone in my Portland apartment, I felt, so very strongly, the beauty and peril of my connection to the more-than-human. And I felt more ready than ever to fight for the natural world, for our non-human relatives, for the Earth, and for all that lives.
