My mother early on taught us to respect all animals, and I mean all animals - not just cats and dogs but rats and snakes and spiders and fish and wildlife, so I really grew up believing they are just like us and just as deserving of consideration.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of respecting all forms of life, not just pets, suggesting that every animal deserves consideration.
Joanna Lumley highlights the lessons she learned from her mother about respecting all animals, regardless of their species. This perspective fosters empathy towards all living beings, suggesting that animals, whether traditionally loved or feared, should be treated with kindness and consideration as they share our world.
In practice
During a school presentation on animal rights, one might quote this to emphasize respect for all living beings.
Way back in the 1970s, I was eating a steak, and I looked down, and for the first time it suddenly looked like flesh to me - like a dead creature. In a flash, I realized that every time I ate any kind of meat, something had been killed for me, and I stopped eating all animals, not just cows and pigs but chickens and fish.
I've never been interested enough to have a career trajectory. I've never had any ambition or thought of what I should be doing or had any idea of what I'd like to do. Never. And still don't. And if something comes along, I say 'Fine.'
It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.
The divine communicates to us primarily through the language of the natural world. Not to hear the natural world is not to hear the divine.
Relative to most of the energy and material flows on Earth, the machinations of humankind are puny. The planet's powers are much, much bigger than our own. But in a few sensitive places, we're making an impact on a planetary scale, and that impact is not a good one.
Each day the storm clouds were opening like great purple flowers and pouring out their dark thunder. Each nightfall, the storm was laid down on their houses like a burden the day had carried.
To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm, he finds himself.
The sweet small clumsy feet of april came into the ragged meadow of my soul.
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