Animals In Our Lives

     Why do we choose to share our lives with animals? Are we seeking "unconditional love?" It is so comforting to know that there is someone waiting for us at the end of long day; someone happy to greet us without judgement...just total acceptance. Here is a being who is vulnerable, and yet, doesn't seem to remember past hurts.  Everything is immediate - life is happening now, not yesterday and not tomorrow. Sure, we love to spoil our pets. Someone once called them:"The only love money can buy."
     But I think the real reason we share our lives with animals has to do with the fact that they are not human.  Animals are wild, no matter how domesticated they seem, these creatures are our link to the natural world and to our own inner wildness.
     Unless you live "off the grid,"or way out in the "sticks," your experience of the natural world is always filtered through technology. Animals can sense a storm coming, they can smell far away rain and feel earth tremors long before we do. They understand the patterns of sunlight in winter. Shadows speak to them like birds who know the moment to begin migration.
     Animals invite us to re-connect to our place in nature and to that place within that is still "wild." C.S. Lewis recognized that wildness we share with animals. In his Chronicles of Narnia, he made this point about Aslan: "He's wild, you know."
     Animals help us to remember, to re-connect, and to resonate with our wildness.