Three weeks ago, my beloved cat and best friend, Lillie, died. Lillie joined our family when I was in kindergarten and she stuck with me through my entire childhood. I fought to keep her after she peed on the couch for the 10th time and I snuck her in through my bedroom window on cold nights. She kept me company through the awkward years of middle school and snuggled under my covers when I was having bad dreams. Lillie lived a good 16 years, but an unknown culprit took her life too soon.
My dad found Lillie’s body in the bottom of our fishpond early one morning, and it was clear she had been attacked. That afternoon, I spent several hours scavenging the yard for footprints, and I kept watch for a few nights after, hoping maybe I would find the perpetrator. I googled animal traps and night-watch cameras; I even considered baiting the culprit with food and killing it with my dad’s pellet gun. I wanted so badly to avenge Lillie’s death, to fight back against the cruelty of nature. My gut kept telling me the murderer deserved to be punished and I couldn’t shake my thirst for justice.I had never felt such a strong desire for revenge, and the worst part was it felt so right. Someone needed to be held accountable, right?
This got me thinking about the motivation behind revenge — we so badly want the universe to hinge on the principle of justice, not mercy. When someone we love dies, we want to make sense of it, we want to annihilate whatever took their life, whether it’s cancer, drugs or another person. It’s like there’s a compass buried in the deepest part of our gut, constantly pointing us in the direction of justice.
As I was plotting my pointless revenge, it became clear I couldn’t rely on my own moral leanings; I needed to be rooted in a truth deeper. Because anger, indignation, fear, disappointment, self-interest, lust, pride...no matter the target, they’re all branches of the same tree. They define our emotional experiences and can so quickly blind our better judgments. While scary at first, I realized how emancipating this idea is — our own desires, our own strivings can’t sustain us. It’s a hard truth, but a beautiful one. It means we can’t be perfect, we can’t be fully good and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean we’re evil — it simply means we’re human.
You might think I’m crazy for thinking all these things after the death of a pet, especially if you’re not a cat lover. But death is unbelievably, indefinably hard, and I’ve been reminded of this over the past month. I’ve been reminded of the frailty of life and the incredible depth of human emotion in response. These emotions can push and pull us in directions we never knew existed. And, perhaps, if we recognize and accept this force, we can move beyond our desires and live in a space of unwarranted forgiveness.
Peyton’s column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at p.williams@cavalierdaily.com.
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