Kat Simmons on Making a Difference

What You Do Matters

     I start my morning like I do most days, checking my emails, deciding what is important enough to read, or what I can tolerate emotionally.  My finger hovers over the delete button, as I scroll through all my messages.  There are several from environmental, humanitarian and animal rescue sites.  It is with trepidation that I open and read most of them.  There is a moment of hesitation, before embarking on what will surely make me experience emotional discomfort.  Do I just ignore all the pleas for help, or do I put myself in this person's or creature's place? 

     Sipping my first cup of coffee, I sign petitions, send letters to my elected officials, as well as share things I believe need to be exposed on my pages. Or I can click delete, and pretend that I never saw them. However,  I encourage myself to read, educate myself and hopefully make some small difference.

     People often ask me if the  knowing changes anything, really?  It changes ME, because once you become awake, it is hard to go back to sleep, and I feel it is part of my daily devotion to show up and speak my truth, for those who perhaps cannot.

 
      Sometimes I do wish I could pull life's covers over my head and go back to a land of unconscious slumber.  However, you cannot heal what you do not know and the earth and all her inhabitants need a healing.  It is like watching a disease between the air, oceans, soil, crops, climate and the horrific things we perpetrate upon all living creatures. I was prompted to write this blog after reading success stories from the American Humane Society’s Second Chance Fund, for animals that have been rescued from deplorable abusive situations. Check out what they do, http://www.americanhumane.org/animals/professional-resources/for-shelter-professionals/grant-programs/second-chance-fund.html. It is hard to read and watch the videos, but I do. I focus on the success stories of the animals that made it, and the wonderful lives they now live. Millions of animals and humans suffer at the hands of others.  I try to understand how another could inflict such abuse on another living creature, but come up empty handed every time.  I cock my head to one side like a dog listening to cricket, as though it will help me find the answer, but it never does.  The only thing that comes up is “why?”  There must have been a lack of love with these people that can be so cruel? Surely someone who had been given adequate love and respect could not inflict such pain on another creature, unless they were sociopathic or otherwise mentally ill?  

 Often the problem just seems so huge, it feels like I am digging a hole in the sand, and the hole fills in faster than I can dig it.  I have had people tell me, "Kat, you cannot save the world.”   I know this to be true, but I also know the person or animal that I choose to give love to, is changed in that same world. 

By being compassionate with ourselves first, we can then give it away. Giving love really starts with how we give it to ourselves.  If you extend that which you have not truly mastered, then what you are giving is not authentic love, but a way to mask your own pain and lack.  So, for today, I will change the world by loving myself deeply, truly and with complete compassion.  I will not speak an unkind word to myself, I will embrace all my light, as well as the shadows.  I will energize myself with that power that lifts me, and then I will go out into the world and give it away. I invite you to do the same.

Blissings,

Kat Simmons

 www.katsimmons.com

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