Notes From May 2003

I started the Foundation, Animals Without Limits in 2000, lived in Sarajevo for 1 1/2 year working with animals. Some people attacked with the question "Why help animals?" in a very aggressive way. Today, I found some notes that I wrote in May, 2003.

It was very hard to sit in front of the TV in Sarajevo watching CNN news. The world becomes so small that it fits in to my living room and comes so close in to my life.
Now, I am sitting in Sweden and watching the news from Iraq.

A small girl that is just 8 years old is working. Her job is to tie carpets. Her day begins at 0500 and ends at 1900 every day in the week, even Saturdays and Sundays, never a vacation. She will probably not grow to be very old. Every day is she inhaling wool fibres that her tiny lungs catch and hold, these lungs that probably will never breath freedom.
Her eyes and hands are being destroyed slowly day by day and with a pain that reminds her daily about the situation we have put her in to.

War, anthrax, nuclear weapons and refugees. With all this I find it more difficult to answer the question that so many people ask me: “Why help animals?”

But it is not hard to help the animals in war-affected countries. Wherever the human being is in life he will always have questions and other opinions. Maybe he feels guilty because he doesn’t do anything for the humans or the animals.
Maybe she doesn’t have the knowledge, after all, what you don’t know you cannot change.

When I work with animals, I am working together with other people and children. Children and their animals are a natural pair in every culture. Children learn to be compassionate and caring from and through animals. If there were no animals, many of life’s lessons would be lost on the children, and the adults that grew from such a world would be sorry indeed.

But why help animals when so many humans are in desperate need? My answer is that I help people to regain their compassion and concern for their neighbors and their society, through the animals.
On this earth we need both, and both do what they are good at.
We have the same needs and feelings, whatever religion we have, or colour of our skin, or sex, even if we walk on two legs or four. We breathe and live here together on this earth that we slowly suffocate.

It is a strange way of showing our gratitude.

The bully that is ganging up on a fellow pupil says; I like you but you are a threat to me and that scares me.

The man that hits his wife says; I do it because I love you so much, but sometimes you annoy me.

The paedophile that is molesting a child says; I do it out of love, I love you my child don’t you understand that?

The warrior says; I do it out of love for my people and my country.

The person that uses the religion as an excuse to use violence says; I do it out of love to God that is so big.

It is a strange way to show their love, when it is blind for the receiver’s feelings.