Live and let live

When God bestowed human beings with supreme intelligence and placed them on the top of the ladder, he probably knew that the hierarchy will survive only till all mortals respect one another. Today, when news is inundated with reports of crime, theft, diseases, rape and injustice, it is time for others to show the way.

Pictures speak more than what words can express. From the middle of a dense forest in Borneo, Indonesia, a picture of an orangutan lending his hand to help the warden who was soaked in chest-deep water created a stir of sorts in the social media. The photographer aptly titled it, “At a time when mankind is dying inside humans, animals lead us to the principles of humanity.” On the list of the endangered species, this orangutan is ready to teach a lesson to humans on humanity and yet we call them wild animals.

Accounts of lions protecting a little Ethiopian girl from her captors, dolphins and seals helping innumerable persons reach the shores and an elephant that rescued an eight-year-old when the tsunami hit Thailand by carrying her on its back to safety, are stories that never made it to the front page yet deliver a powerful message that animals know how to care. They strike only if their natural surroundings, important for their survival, is in danger.

Power in the human kingdom has paved the way to insatiable greed and selfishness thus resulting in many animals losing their natural habitats and are on the verge of extinction. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” It is time to introspect how power has actually made us ignorant of our basic human nature, to live and let live, and appraise how these ‘wild’ animals show us the right way to do it.