A lesson from Arthur & Dolly!

Last weekend I was given the grand responsibility of looking after a friend’s two rabbits, Arthur and Dolly, who have recently had two babies. Both Arthur and Dolly are young rabbits, and are different in looks as they are in personality. Arthur is a strong, sculpted hare with a beautiful coat of grey. On the other hand, Dolly is a fluffy ball of white’ish fur. In fact, when I first saw her, I mistook her face for her backside because her eyes, nose and mouth were hidden behind her long-haired coat; a distinctive feature of the Angora rabbit (I later found out from Joel). In terms of personality, Arthur is a feisty rabbit who doesn’t like a lot of human fussing, e.g. being picked up and stroked (yes... he scratched me enough times for me to learn this lesson quickly enough). Dolly, is a placid creature more amenable to the human touch, enjoying being petted and stroked. Although, I found Arthur’s personality more challenging, over the weekend, I grew to a place of accepting Arthur’s strong-willed nature. Last night, Joel reminded me of a teacher’s mug that I bought several years ago which reads: ‘they’re all God’s little children’. It got me thinking. Indeed, despite Arthur and Dolly’s very different personalities, they are both unique and loved by their owners. In the same way, as we negotiate all manner of personality types in this world we must recognise that in spite of the challenges of human nature, we are all God’s children, and we need to work hard at trying to accept people as they are. This is a useful reminder in any human interaction – a marriage, a friendship, and amongst work colleagues. Dolly and Arthur (more significantly) have taught me there is a certain maturity that comes with adjusting our responses to other personalities, however difficult, and even if they do fall short of our expectations. Accepting people as they are, or rabbits in this case, has been my lesson for the week – incidentally, that choice and responsibility is all of ours to make.