When was the last time you cried?

For me it was yesterday.

I was driving down a country road in rural Tennessee when I saw his eyes looking back at me. I couldn’t tell for certain if he was a he, but I had a gut feeling he was. His gentle face looked down when our eyes met, but then raised back up to meet my gaze. He locked on to my eyes as if they were his last hope in the world.

That’s when I noticed he wasn’t alone.

There were six or more sets of eyes peering my way. All aware, all innocent, all tender.

The backs of eyes began to sting and I couldn’t rip my stare from theirs. Sandwiched in between aluminum rails, unable to turn around, these poor creatures were being carted off to a place where their fates would be determined for them by the likes of my kind. Regardless of their pain, with no concern for their suffering, they would be shot with a bolt, right in between their eyes, and hacked up for people who swung through the drive-thru for a burger on their way home from work.

I knew that what I was looking at was just a few of the 300 million cattle that are carted off to die each year in the world.

I was witnessing only 0.000002% of what was going to happen.

My eyes stayed with them, passing them all I could offer, until their cruel chauffeur turned out of sight.

As they remained with me in my mind’s eye, all I could do in that moment was cry for them, to give them my tears, and to let them know that someone cared that they would no longer be here by the time the sun set again.

I mourned for them, and mourned for the time that I, too, played a part in their despair.

To see someone else suffering without the ability to help is one of the worst things I can imagine.

I yearn for the time when humans will wake up to see their own habits as the savagery it is, and all I can do is hope.

Hope and cry.