I Don't Know What It's Like

I don't know what a hawk sees. I could study it and know the theory and even describe it in a text book, but I will never know what it's like to experience a hawk's vision.

I don't know how a mouse feels when the hawk is bearing down upon it. I can approach empathy, having run from predators; the pounding heart and rushing blood. The fear. The need to run. But I will never understand how the mouse experiences that.

I will never know how a tree understands the concept of a year, who could live a thousand of them in place and stillness while the world around them rapidly shifts and changes. The cycle of seasons and rhythm of stars. Are trees astronomers, knowing every solar flare and tilt of the earth?

A tree is nearly immortal, but with absolutely no control over its environment or its impact upon it. If a bird wants to nest in its branches or a squirrel in its trunk it has no say, and the whole lives of these creatures must pass as a fleeting moment - but I don't know that. I don't know what that's like for the tree.

I don't know what it's like to be connected root and canopy to an entire forest of brothers and sisters, each year bringing us higher and wider and closer. I don't know what the bite of an axe feels like, or to bathe in torrential rain.

I don't know what it feels like for the coyote running from wildfire, or the immensity of grief experienced by a blue whale at the loss of her calf.

I don't know what it's like to be the last of my species, utterly alone, the last holder of my language, the last bearer of my truths.

...

But, can I reach out to you as a sister?

Do we know that your prayer is my meditation?

Can we see that your attempt to lift a heavy thing at the gym, sinews aching against willpower, is my attempt to get out of bed some mornings, weighted down by the heavy foreboding of dread and nameless fear?

Can we feel that you standing in the wings about to step out in front of a crowd of thousands, stomach churning, mind spinning, mouthing lines of practiced dialogue, begging the muscle-memory of rehearsals to allow a seemingly seamless delivery, is me standing at the door, cat on the stairs, rehearsing the steps in my mind - a footpath, a road to cross, a shopkeeper to face - mind spinning, stomach churning.

Our experiences are a mirror to each other, though they seem so distant and unrelatable.

You pushing the rails of your wheels against a ramp I can dance up. I stand at the shore with the empty froth of waves at my toes imagining beasts of the deep tangled in seaweed and hiding in kelp forests ready to bite the unsuspecting, while you swim and cavort, a mermaid freed from the confines of the chair.

We are not the same, no, but is there a place where we can be at emotional eye-level?

Human rights and equality isn't the demand of my side and the concession of your side. They belong to all of us. It's the table between us, that we all may sit around and hear each other.