Enlarging My Cocoon - A Right Change for Animals

Caterpillars and butterflies represent transformation and "magical" change.  From a worm-like creature to a "flutterby" (as I called them as a kid), it was all so beautiful to me!

I also learned as a kid, that even man has necessity to change and grow. Even so, I learned too that many people avoid any learning beyond their "labor" at formal education.  Most get "settled in" and lose the hunger for knowledge.  Aside from the "new skills" that might be necessary to make a living or raise children, most people it seems, reduce their lives to the bare essentials.  The "comfortable", unchallenged and mundane.  Whatever they know (or don't) seems to function fine for them. Habits and beliefs that they absorbed as children will likely last them into the total of their lives...

But this was never me... And in this way, I have never changed.

I have never changed in my love of new ideas, insights and discoveries.  Always the one most likely to read a book on "personal growth" rather than the latest novel starring some fictional character's life.  I was always my own "character"...

And in this way, I have never changed.

I was also likely to be the one to always look for fairness... Always judging the right or wrong of a thing according to the damages inflicted on someone else.  I always rooted for the underdog. I was always a cheerleader for the victims. And my heart was always tender for the hurt and harmed.



And in this way, I have never changed.


I have also always loved Truth. And have never been shy to challenge others to examine what might not be real in the way they see a notion.  I've always been enthused to debate ideas and concepts... To dig into serious content no matter what work it took to get to the substance that was genuine.

And in this way, I have never changed.

This I know... This is always who I've been.  These qualities (or flaws, however one wishes to view them), has always been a part and a completion of "me."

If I lived two hundred years ago... This would have been me.


And in two thousand years hence, I will never have changed.



And all friends and family who "knew me" as one to stick up for truth, to fight for fairness, to have empathy for the downers, "liked or loved" me, (I assumed), because I embodied what they thought as well. I can only surmise that people want to associate with others because their beliefs are similar and same.  Friends reflect each other's ideology.  So there was I thought, a commonality in our values... I thought we shared a mutual goal of honesty and the desire to give justice it's day.  I thought I was loved for my sense of fair play...

Yet, oddly - When I finally made the connections to include the most oppressed and victimized beings ever to be sacrificed on the unholy alters of use and gluttony - All the empathy I ever felt... All the passion I ever had for those who were under the whip and knife, was seen as something odd and mis-aligned in me!  Those people who "knew me" would say that I had "changed".

But it wasn't really me who changed at all!

I know there are those waiting and wishing for me to "change back", and I say to them... That my voice for animals, my fight for their liberation, is not a "hobby", or a "fancy" or a whim. No... This is not only who I was but who I'll remain till my time runs out.  I'll never not want to champion for my fellow earthlings.  Especially since I know how easy it is for their horrible mistreatment to go unseen even under the scrutiny of a "thoughtful" person's eye. I am more completely me than I have ever been! And if anyone ever "liked or loved" me before... There is only the same in me now.  I am exactly who I always was... Only with better information.  And more resolve to maintain the course I always thought was right from the start...

So if anything has changed at all... It is only that I've enlarged my "cocoon" to include those innocent ones who should have mattered all along.  And to those who think this is not change for the good - Perhaps we never knew each other - at all?