You all know I’m a glass half full kind of girl. I still am. I always will be. This morning I woke up in a bundle with my three critters. I hit snooze on the alarm and we all snuggled down for a little longer. We giggled and enjoyed our little cocoon of love and happiness.

Some days though, it’s difficult not to be dismayed by the world at large. The horror we inflict on each other in the name of peace. The horror we inflict on animals in the name of being fed. The horror we inflict on our oceans getting rid of insane amounts of plastic. The horror we inflict on the forests and the animals that live there. The horror we are inflicting on our planet and the change we are creating to the climate, land and sea.

The horror we inflict on other human beings turning them away from our country when they are in their greatest time of need. Or on human beings whose countries grow crops that don’t feed their starving and dying children, rather their crops are sold to other nations to feed animals who never know a day of kindness to be fattened up and killed for human consumption.

This post is not about what we eat {although veganism is one of the things playing very heavily on my mind} but rather about respect, kindness and the distinct lack of them which seems to inhabit our world. Are people really too busy and self-occupied to say thank you to the bus driver when they arrive at their stop? How about wishing them a good day?

There’s a homeless guy near my office. He has a piece of cardboard that says I would be grateful it if a kind stranger gave me … and at different times of the day he attaches various final words. The other morning I walked by and noticed it said a latte at the bottom. I smiled to myself and thought that was ingenious. Early morning in a windy main city street bursting with commuters, I was feeling like a latte myself. So I bought the man one, and a nice fresh fruit muffin to go with it. He smiled, we chatted for a minute, he said how much he appreciated that I’d thought to get him food as well as the coffee and he wished me a great day.

Did I want anything in return? Not at all. I just wanted to do something kind for someone. Did I get myself a coffee? Nope, because I’m on a pretty strict budget and coffee wasn’t on the cards that day. But I’m not living on the street, hoping a kind stranger walks past and {a} reads my note; {b} does anything about it; {c} gives me the time of day; or {d} ridicules me for having the audacity to write what I want rather than get a job. Yes, that is EXACTLY what one commuter walking just ahead of me said. Don’t even get me started on that.

Imagine finding yourself and your children displaced – your only option to get on a raft that is pretending to be a boat and hope for the best – if you are lucky enough to make it – in a land thousands of miles away. That when you arrive you are accepted and that you are treated humanely.

Imagine sitting in a cage at an animal shelter on a wet, rainy day – hell, even on a sunny day – and watch people go by, never giving you a second glance. Day after day, until one day some kind person opens the cage and you wag your tail with joy – only to find it is your last walk on this earth.

Imagine squashing yourself into a crate with 50 of your closest and spend the next however-long crowded together, slowly dehydrating in a cesspool of your own shit only to be ultimately let out of the crate – or dragged out because you are too weak to move for yourself – to then have your throat slit. Or wait in line with the smell of death knowing you are next.

Imagine having the unfortunate circumstance of being born female in a country where it is entirely acceptable for you and your younger sister to be paraded naked and raped multiple times because of a mistake your brother made.

We need to all walk a day in someone else’s shoes {or paws as it were}. Just stop and imagine, for one minute, that you are not you. That you are one of any of the creatures we share our planet with that I have described above. How do you not feel dismay?

Today, I wish all beings would choose to be kind. Only together can we heal the world.