Friday, July 22, 2005

Compassion and understanding

Al Pacino tells the following story: "During one of my performances I made a connection with a pair of eyes in the audience, and I thought, 'This is incredible; these eyes are penetrating me.' I went through the whole performance just relating to those eyes, giving the whole thing to those eyes. When curtain call came, I looked in the direction of those eyes, and it was a seeing eye dog ... I couldn't get over it -- the compassion and intensity and understanding in those eyes, and it was a dog."

From time to time I've seen the same quality in my own dog Bogie's eyes, but I had always assumed they were faux qualities. I thought, "It's amazing how they mimic our own emotions." Because, hey, they're animals. They don't really have compassion. They can't really "understand," the same way we understand.

The Pacino story woke me up. Hey, maybe they aren't "mimicking" our emotions. Maybe they really have those same emotions, in even greater quantity or intensity than we do.

Now when Bogie looks at me that way I'm going to be thinking that he really is "intense, compassionate and understanding."

The above is from a sermon by the late Tom Ahlburn. Pretty remarkable.