In recent years I’ve learned that I have a somewhat different view of animals than many. I think people want their dogs and cats to have souls because they love them dearly and they wish to cross the Rainbow Bridge with them and join them in heaven, or whatever afterlife they might believe in. This comes from love so great the idea of separation is unbearable. We want them with us, and we wish them to be like us and are increasingly seeing them that way – they have souls like we do, ascend to heaven like some of us wish we will, grieve for one another they way we do. Many people see animals as their children,  view them that way, mourn them in that way.

I love animals the same way, I think, but I believe they are very different from us. I do not believe they have language, or speak in our words, or construct their emotions and narratives – guilt, envy, resentment, grief, separation, anxiety –  in the way that we do. I do not know if any of us have souls, but I believe the human soul or spirit is very different from that of an animal. We suffer from conscience, are stirred by creation and change, undertake to create political systems, improve our lives, invent things. Animals don’t do that.

Many people are beginning to worship animals and seek perfect, no-kill worlds for them. I worship the part of animals that is so different from us. That accepts life and death. That lives in the moment. That lives off of instinct and intuition, and does not stave off death with medications and medieval procedures,  and does not attack or harm one another, or wage systematic and destructive war, or waste or damage the earth, or conceive of terrorist attacks or acquire more resources than they can use, or live to pay their bills. Animals are innately spiritual to me, and evolved in so many ways beyond our consciousness.

But I love them because they are so different from humans, and I hope I never come to see them as the same.