Loving Beyond Agreement

A dear friend recently invited me to meet four new piglets on her farm.

There was no way I was saying no to that.

Baby pigs?

Absolutely.

I was already imagining tiny noses just waiting to be booped.

When I arrived, there they were—four little piglets racing around their mama with all the enthusiasm only babies seem to possess.

They zoomed.

They explored.

They climbed over one another.

They were joyful in the way only very young animals can be.

I stood there smiling, completely captivated.

And then I remembered something.

My friend raises pigs for food.

For a long time, that was difficult for me.

When people ask about our farms, I jokingly say,

"Mine is the snuggle farm...hers is the food farm."

It usually gets a laugh.

But behind the joke was something I genuinely struggled with.

How could I allow myself to fall in love with these little piglets, knowing what their future would be?

For a while, I wondered if visiting the farm made me inauthentic.

Was I betraying my own values?

Or pretending not to feel what I was feeling?

Eventually, I asked my friend a question I'd been carrying for a long time.

"How do you cuddle them...love them...and then later...let them go?"

She didn't become defensive.

She didn't try to convince me.

She simply shared her heart.

She told me that she eats meat.

And if she is going to eat meat, she wants to know that the animals she nourishes her family with lived beautiful lives.

Lives where they were respected.

Cared for.

Loved.

Not treated as commodities.

Not forgotten.

When their lives ended, she wanted that ending to be filled with gratitude instead of fear.

I stood there quietly taking in her words.

Did they erase my feelings?

No.

Did they change my own choices?

No.

But something else changed.

I realized understanding someone isn't the same thing as agreeing with them.

That distinction matters.

So much of life asks us to choose sides.

To decide who's right.

Who's wrong.

Who's good.

Who's bad.

That day, standing among four joyful little piglets, I realized there might be another way.

I could continue honoring my own heart...

While also honoring the sincerity of someone else's.

I didn't leave believing exactly what my friend believes.

I left with a deeper appreciation for the complexity of love.

Sometimes compassion doesn't ask us to abandon our convictions.

Sometimes it simply asks us to see another person's humanity.

The piglets never asked me to solve that question.

They simply invited me to hold it with an open heart.

Maybe that's enough.

Maybe some of life's deepest wisdom isn't found in certainty.

Maybe it's found in learning how to love across difference.

You May Be Wondering...

Can we deeply love animals even when people make different choices about them?

I think each of us has to answer that question for ourselves. What I've learned is that listening to another person's heart doesn't require abandoning my own. Sometimes understanding begins when we become willing to hear a story that's different from our own experience.

May you see the world through the eyes of love, remembering that we are all part of one living, sacred whole.