There are some days when the world feels unbearably heavy, days when the headlines seem to blur together and the noise of everyday life makes it hard to hear anything at all.

And then, in those rare, quiet moments, the ones where we finally sit still long enough to feel something … a single sentence can change everything — change our perspective on how we see the world.

For me, it was the Dalai Lama’s gentle reminder, “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”

Such simple words, and such a simple request.

And yet, as I look around, I find myself wondering why something so basic can feel so complicated, so hard for some people to live by.

Helping others is not always about making a grand gesture.

It isn’t about magnificent acts of heroism. Nor is it about gaining any recognition.

Sometimes it is just about noticing the smallest lives among us. The ones who cannot speak for themselves. The ones who cannot ask for help, who cannot explain their fear or their hunger to us.

They are the ones who have nothing in this world except for instinct and trust, and who are hoping the two-legged giants who share their space will choose mercy over indifference.

If you took the time to look into an animal’s eyes, you would notice there is a particular kind of innocence in them.

A purity, a quietness.

They do not bargain for love. They do not negotiate for safety.

They simply exist, believing that we will not harm them.

And that trust — that fragile, defenseless trust — is something we should cradle within both our hands.

That kind of trust is what I have been thinking about a lot lately.

Winter has settled in over the Ohio Valley. The snow … a weighted blanket which cannot seem to be cleared. Temperatures most days are beyond freezing.

And while we pull our coats a little tighter and hurry toward our warm houses and steaming mugs of coffee or hot chocolate, there are animals who are not given that luxury.

They must navigate the cold with nothing more than their instinct and luck.

They are not nuisances.

They are not nameless shadows.

They are living beings simply trying to survive that same bitter wind that we complain about from behind closed doors.

I thank God for the people who see them.

I thank God for hearing my daily prayers, for each day I ask that he please take care of the animals who need him. I include in my request that he keep them safe, protect them from harm and to bring the right people into their lives to help them out of whatever awful situation they may find themselves in.

I always conclude my prayer by saying that I ask these things on the animals’ behalf, for they are unable to pray themselves.

And so … I do it for them.

But there are times when even the most thoughtful and heartfelt prayer does not get answered the way we would like.

There is a small group of volunteers who have tried to help those animals which society has forgotten. The quiet heroes who never ask for recognition or applause. The ones who spend their time, their money building insulated shelters for these strays.

And by strays … I mean cats.

You see, cats are not like dogs.

If you were to spot a dog wandering alone, would you simply look away?

Chances are you would reach for your phone. You would call the humane society, the dog warden, maybe even the police.

Perhaps you would go a step further and try to coax the dog to safety yourself.

As we should.

But cats?

How many cats have we noticed not wearing a collar, is nameless and clearly does not have a home of its own?

And still, we make no call. We offer no help.

We glance in their direction and continue about our day as though the moment never existed.

Why is that? They both have four legs. They both have soft paws, warm fur and whiskers.

They both carry a beating heart and a longing for safety, for kindness, for someone to see them.

So why do we treat them differently?

Why does one spark an immediate rush to help, while the other is quietly overlooked?

A life is a life, whether it barks or purrs.

Both feel hunger.

Both feel fear.

Both depend on the compassion of the humans who cross their path.

If a dog deserves our concern, I believe a cat does as well.

Their needs may look different, but their worth is not.

Perhaps the simplest truth is this: Every creature wandering alone deserves someone to care enough to stop, to notice, to act.

Again, as the Dalai Lama first said, “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”

Those volunteers understood that message. And they chose as their purpose in life to help others.

They built for those homeless cats a place that would keep them protected from the winter that has blanketed our communities.

Simple structures. Styrofoam, straw, fleece.

Nothing fancy.

Nothing that would ever make the news.

Just small pockets of warmth tucked behind garages and under porches, placed there by hands that believe compassion is still worth practicing.

They didn’t do it for the recognition.

They did it because all animals deserve kindness.

But then came the moment when a simple sentence changed everything.

It changed the way my heart beat, the way I phrased my prayers, the way I saw some people.

Because despite how hard those volunteers tried to help those cats, all it took was one person to come along and destroy everything.

A female (for she does not deserve the term woman) for reasons I could never begin to even understand, sought out these makeshift shelters and destroyed them.

Not moved. Not removed.

Destroyed.

She tore apart the only protection these animals had against the freezing dark.

There is nothing I dislike more in this world than hearing this type of news story.

How can any decent human being make sense about that kind of cruelty that is so deliberate, so unnecessary, so heartbreakingly evil?

What is gained by shattering a styrofoam box or tote that was meant to keep a living creature alive for one more night?

What satisfaction is found in tossing aside a blanket that was placed there with love?

What emptiness must live inside a person who chooses to add more suffering to a world that is already overabundant with it?

It’s easy to feel anger. And I did.

But then another feeling crept in.

A quieter and sadder feeling. Pity.

To carry that much darkness, to be someone who seeks out the small warmth others create just to extinguish it? That is its own kind of punishment I suppose.

A heart that cold is already consistently living in winter.

How we treat the most defenseless among us is the truest reflection of who we are when no one is watching.

A dog waiting by the door, a cat curled in a sunbeam — they trust us without hesitation.

They forgive us without condition.

They love us without agenda.

And when we fail them, we lose a piece of our own humanity.

Despite the cats literally having frozen to death, there is one small part in this tragic story that is worth mentioning.

For every one person who destroys, who hates, there are 10 who rebuild, who love.

Those volunteers will not quit. They will not throw up their hands in defeat nor will it harden their hearts.

They will gather their supplies, wipe away their tears and begin again.

Because they understand something those who destroy never will … kindness is stronger than hate. Always.

As you move through your Sunday, I hope you will take a moment to notice those animals who share in your world.

The ones in your home. The ones in your yard. The ones who slip through the moments of your day almost unseen.

They are small, but their lives matter. And we have the power to make those lives a little easier.

We do not need to be saints or saviors. We just need to choose compassion over cruelty.

We need to choose warmth over bitterness.

We need to choose mercy over apathy.

We need to be the kind of people who build shelters, not the kind who destroys them.

Because in the end, our purpose here is really pretty simple: Help others. And if we cannot help them, at the very least, let us refuse to hurt them.

(Stenger is the community editor of the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times newspapers. She can be contacted at jstenger@heraldstaronline.com.)