If there’s any truth to the age-old saying ‘what goes around comes around’, then what do they get for their pain? Do we even give it a second thought?

If what goes around comes around, what do they get for their pain?

They are earthlings. They have the right to be here just as much as humans do. Perhaps the answer is found in another age-old saying, and one equally true: we reap just what we sow.

So of course animals feel, and of course they experience pain. After all, has nature endowed these wonderful animals with wellsprings of sentiment so that they should not feel? Or do animals have nerves in order to be insensitive? Reason demands a better answer. But one thing is absolutely certain: Animals used for food, used for clothing, used for entertainment, and in scientific experiments, and all the oppression that is done to them under the sun…they all die from pain. Each and every one.

Isn’t it enough that animals the world over live in permanent retreat from human progress and expansion, and for many species, there is simply nowhere else to go? It seems the fate of many animals is either to be unwanted by man or wanted too much.

We enter as lords of the earth, bearing strange powers of terror and mercy alike. But human beings should love animals as the knowing love the innocent and the strong love the vulnerable. When we wince at the suffering of animals, that feeling speaks well of us, even if we ignore it. And those who dismiss love for our fellow creatures as mere sentimentality overlook a good and important part of our humanity: that it takes nothing away from a human to be kind to an animal, and it is actually within us to grant them a happy life, and a long one.