I have a thing for elephants. Thus, I have been given elephant tea towels, elephant purses, elephant scarves, elephant earrings; you get the idea. Where this comes from I have no idea. Maybe seeing "Dumbo" as a kid, or my fascination with India, which predates marrying a man of South Asian origins. I gravitate towards them in the zoo, and am, at the same time, tortured by their lack of space and loneliness. When I was in India and our rickshaw passed an elephant slauntering down the street, I felt dropped into a magical world. And like the bear, which is my totem, these creatures are huge, and dangerous. They are being pushed and squeezed out by people, and they need SPACE. They are threatened. Is all this a mirror of my own psychology? Do I feel like a large underdog? I doubt it, but something resonates, and I respect that.
I'm connected. And if I'm connected to elephants, then, heck I figure I'm connected to every living thing, and our crowded world, and our shrinking habitat and our need to KEEP IN OUR FAMILY GROUPS. The elephants show us we have certain basic needs, and they haven't evolved. We still need food, shelter, safe habitat, social relationships, family, and to be free from being hunted down and killed. And a lot of us on this planet, human and other, are not safeguarded our basic rights. Trayvon was one of us.
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