All Roads

There is a thought that drifts just beyond reach each time a newborn lamb arrives into our care. Perhaps it is because they come to us carrying so little of the world, yet somehow awaken so much within our own.

Only hours old, little Lolly Pop was found on the loneliest of roads, his future resting upon the chance that someone would see him, stop and care. And so, one road ended while another quietly began, leading him here to sanctuary.

The smallest of our lamb clan, Lolly Pop nevertheless seems determined to take up the greatest space in every heart he meets. His little body wears his excitement for life like a disco ball, sparkling with such abandon that everything around him seems brighter simply because he is there.

His leaps are enormous, his appetite voracious and his enthusiasm for his bottle matched only by his eagerness to race alongside his new friends.

Perhaps this is why so many people protect themselves from truly caring about farmed animals. Because caring has consequences. Once we see their joy, their vulnerability and their fierce desire to live, something within us responds at the very same pitch.

That warmth becomes connection and connection becomes empathy. And empathy has a curious way of loosening the borders we once built between them and us.

For Lolly Pop is not an idea, a product or a label. He is a spirited little someone whose life matters deeply to him.

As it should to us all.

And although he was found on the loneliest of roads, perhaps all roads worth travelling eventually lead us here — to a place where our borders crumble, our hearts open and we find our way back to our humanity.