I Love Animals.

When my kids were growing up, my house was a zoo.

I’m not referring to the antics, confusion or disorder caused by my children. I’m talking about real animals, the kinds that chirp, swim, bark, crawl, swing…and they were all endearing members of the Liew family.

It started when I read somewhere that people who owned pets generally have good hearts. That’s when I bought some of them for my branding purposes.

Ok, that’s not the reason. Haha!

My family and I love pets. At that point in time, we just couldn’t help adding more of them to our domestic animal kingdom. And we have always been drawn to other people’s pets too.

Did you know that even before God created us, He had animals in His mind. He wanted humans to look after them.

Read for yourselves:

‘Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”‘ (Genesis1:26)

Animals have every right to co-exist with us. They should be treated with love, care and concern.

Animals don’t go to war with us. They don’t invent and deploy weapons of mass destruction.

They don’t gossip, grouse and gripe about their own kind. They don’t torture us, backstab us, con us, sue us, threaten us, curse us, abuse us, insult us, and beat us up.

They don’t complain about life and make us feel negative about it.

They don’t go to the online world and hide under cloaks of anonymity for evil intentions. They don’t flame us cruelly and throw barbs at us to hurt us.

On the contrary, they can teach us a thing or two about life. For example, they live to not only survive but to also enjoy their life.

Dogs can better welcome us and be more excited about seeing us than many humans. Their eyes can show more love and affection than many of our friends.

When we go through a failure, our dogs will never laugh at and look down on us. They can share our pain and sorrow.

They may even make a fool of themselves to console us. They do all kinds of funny tricks to make us laugh.

Animals can be loyal to us, love us, and serve us. They can also defend and die for us.

For more lessons  from animals, please go to:

http://liewinspiration.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/learning-from-wild-dogs/

http://liewinspiration.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/lessons-from-a-giraffe/

http://liewinspiration.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/living-like-a-dog/

http://liewinspiration.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/breaking-free-2/

I cannot imagine a world without animals. We may slip into an abyss of loneliness and our very existence may be threatened.

That’s why our standards of ethos and morality should also include how we live with and treat animals.

As Mahatma Gandhi would say, ‘The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.’

We can’t have nobility and dignity if we do not extend it to the animal kingdom. We can’t say we have love in our heart if we have no love for animals.

We are not in touch with our soul until we realize that animals suffer pain like us.

We should consider how they feel when we treat them badly or when others treat them badly and we stand by and do nothing about it.

Perhaps, the Golden Rule should also apply here. Don’t do to others what you don’t want others to do to you.

A quote from Immanuel Kant comes to mind: ‘We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.’

For all the virtues and strengths that we have, we make ourselves less than a human when we abuse animals. We lower ourselves to one of the lowest denominators when we do all kinds of barbaric and wicked acts on them.

Let me close with a beautiful quote from William Penn:

‘I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness or abilities that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.’

Go4It!

I hope this message will find a place in your heart.

By the way, I have also recorded other reflections.

Visit my Inspiration blog at http://liewinspiration.wordpress.com/

For my opinions on social affairs, please visit my Transformation blog at http://hsrpatrickliew.wordpress.com/

Please visit my website, www.patrickliew.net

Please read my reflections and continue to teach me.

Life is FUNtastic!