April 17, 2019
If you had asked me, “What is love?” a week ago I would have stumbled through a disjointed, rambling response that may have included my understanding of agape (a Greek term for Divine love), romantic love, paternal love, brotherly love, and on and on. I had no simple understanding of what the love bond is to guide my life. I do now. And it came from a wild cheetah.
More accurately, it came from an enchanting TV show I watched last week called The Cheetah Children*, the story of how a mother cheetah protects and trains her cubs as they mature from birth to leaving for a life on their own after 18 months together as a family. What makes the show special is the intimate photography by Kim Wolhuter, a renowned wildlife photographer and conservationist who literally was a member of the family during the 18 months. He walked the plains of Mozambique with the family, followed them on hunts, and even slept with them.
This extraordinary relationship between a human and a family of wild animals started as Wolhuter gradually gained the mother’s trust before she gave birth. When the cubs came, she showed no concern as they crawled over him, exploring this unusual creature. Such was the mothers trust that she later allowed a doctor associate of Wolhuter’s to stitch up a cub who had been bitten by a baboon.
The show chronicles the cubs’ growth toward independence as they first shift from a diet of mother’s milk to sharing the fresh meat of her kills. Then they learned, from watching her over many months, how to find, bring down, and kill their own food. When they had learned this critical lesson, the mother knew that her work had been done, and she responded to her hormonal call to seek a mate and start the process all over again. A poignant scene in the film shows the reactions of the two remaining cubs as they watch their mother amble off onto the bush, knowing that the time for separation, for their striking out on their own, had come. But Wolfhuter’s story does not end there.
His daily life with the cheetahs ended and he started work on a story about African dogs. But more than a year after the separation scene, Wolfhuter was driving through the cheetahs’ range when he spotted what looked like one of the now grown and independent cubs. He stopped, got out of his car and sat facing the cheetah, who he then recognized as the cub he had named Chinzy. But Chinzy showed no recognition of him for many moments. Then she turned to look at him, ambled toward him, stopped directly in front of him, and proceeded to lick his cheek.
Wolfhuter could not hide his feelings as he described this moment on film: here was a wild animal whose life depends on killing and eating prey expressing both affection for and pleasure at being reunited with a potential meal. How can this be? To me, the simple answer is that Wolfhuter and Chinzy were connected, entangled, by a bond of love.
But then I asked myself, What did Wolfhuter do to form this bond of love with a wild, meat-eating creature? The following answers have given me an understanding of the behaviors that I now believe are essential to building and sustaining a bond of love.
First, Wolhuter had established a tight bond of trust with Chinzy’s mother. She had no apprehension or fear about how he would behave toward her or her cubs. Perhaps that bond of trust was expanded from mom to the cubs as they calmly examined him just after they were born. The trust bond clearly remained strong throughout the 18 months that Wolhuter was accepted as a member of the family. And it clearly remained when Wolfhuter and Chinzy reunited after 12 months.
My first conclusion: Trust is essential to forming and maintaining a bond of love between both people and animals. My guess is that successful trainers of dogs, horses, etc. would agree. But there’s more.
Trust alone does not describe what motivated Chinzy to lick Wolhuter’s face. That was a show of pure affection that came, I believe from his having accepted and appreciated her. Negative judgmental thoughts about the animal did not enter his mind; he understood, accepted, and respected her for what she was. He also appreciated her; he radiated his pleasure at being in her company through his thoughts and actions.
Obviously, it is easier to accept and appreciate animals that interact with us on a simplistic level than it is to accept and appreciate humans, with whom we have complex relationships; but it is no less essential for building strong bonds of love.
My final conclusion: Love is a bond that is based upon trust, acceptance, and appreciation. Here’s how this understanding is changing my life:
• I strive to exude trustworthiness. I want my partner to have complete assurance that I will never knowingly hurt her in any way, and that I will always strive to support her. My commitment to never hurt extends to all people (and critters), even to perfect strangers, and I am striving to have my demeanor reflect that commitment.
• I am also striving to display what is in my heart as I encounter others, namely that I accept and appreciate them as valuable, unique human beings; I strive to not judge others unless their words or actions provide reason for doing so, which they rarely do.
• With my significant other, family members, and close friends, people I know well, I am striving to discount as petty any habits and characteristics they may have that could be annoying to me. For example, I’m a neat-nick; I like to see everything in its place. Yet my significant other does not share this compulsion; she sometimes leaves things where they were last used instead of returning them to where they belong. In the past, this has annoyed me and occasionally I let her know it, which tended to strain our bond of love temporarily. No more. Now I strive to accept her as she is and happily just put things back in their place, feeling as I do that I am expressing my love for her, love that is based upon the many reasons why I appreciate her so much: her goodness of character, her caring for others and for nature, her propensity to give of herself. Next to these, neatness is petty.
I understand that love is a very broad and deep subject, and that this may seem to be an extremely simplistic definition. But therein lies its strength, I believe. I believe that as I focus on building bonds based on trust, acceptance, and appreciation, I am becoming a better person. And what a joy that is. Thank you Chinzy.
*The Cheetah Children, PBS Nature, originally aired November 8, 2017. DVD Available from Amazon and Shop PBS