The Penguin Lessons

by Tom Michell

For her, the joy of the things she could do outweighed the woes of those she couldn’t.

“I only want things that make me happy. So many people are captivated by things that can never make them happy!” “What makes you happy, then, Maria?” “Oh, my children and my family make me happy, and my friends. Growing things make me happy. Flowers on the tomatoes and the swelling fruit. The hens, the pigs, and the goats make me happy. My work makes me happy, too.” She paused, then said, “Growing older with the people I love makes me happy.”

glory is living freely as birds of the air; I make no earthly nest where there is so much suffering, Nobody can follow when I again take flight. I have no lover to vex me with quarrels; Like the beautiful birds that hop between branches, I make my bed of clover and the stars are my covers.

How, in a world so full of astonishing beauty and priceless wonders, had humans devised so much misery, and not just for our own species?

How was it that a penguin brought such comfort and tranquility to the people whose lives he touched? Why did they go to his terrace and bare their souls to him as though they had known him for a lifetime, treating him like a real friend who could be relied upon in adversity? Was it peculiar to those times of violence and despair, and would it have been different in periods of peace and prosperity? It certainly appeared that people confided more willingly in Juan Salvado than

in their fellows. Such, it seems, is simply the nature of humans with penguins.

the pain of parting is the toll demanded by fate for all the joy brought to us by loved ones, and I felt inconsolable.

Of course, time moves on, and new family, friends, and pets jostle for position in our hearts, but the vacancy left by previous occupants never fills. We keep our loved ones alive through our memories, our conversations, and our stories, but we don’t necessarily choose to reveal how much they really meant. We don’t have to.

One day, I believe, we will be able to confirm that many animals have the capacity to understand and process information to a far more sophisticated degree than opinion currently holds.

I firmly believe there is much more for us to learn about the intelligence, communications, and emotions of wild creatures, whose capacity for those things is greater that we generally give them credit for.

Almost all of us are so consumed with providing for ourselves, our families, our futures, and our expanding communities that we don’t notice

the plight of wildlife. Is there any chance that the world’s oceans can survive the damage we are causing but just don’t see? In an equivalent way that millions of Marias paid indirectly for the mortgaged homes of the middle classes in Buenos Aires, thanks to inflation, it is the penguins and the rest of nature’s descamisados who pay the real cost of our way of life, in the only currency they have.