The Goat and I: An Existential Conversation about Saviour Syndrome

I was driving down a South African road through some townships with my friend @sunettespies, when I saw a suffering baby goat. We had just been to the store to get some cold drinks for the blistering heat. It always fascinates and upsets me to drive back home through the townships, where I witness abject poverty on a large scale, and can do nothing but drive by it.

Then I saw the goat – a baby, leg broken and dangling, struggling up the side of a mountain of garbage, trying to keep up with it’s mother and siblings. Not only does this goat have to live off of garbage, but he now has to struggle and endure the pain of a broken leg day in and day out, and nobody there can help him. I became overwhelmed by emotion, and so I asked, “why can’t we stop to pick him up and take him to the vet?”

Sunette and I had previously been talking about the importance of the ‘small things’ when it comes to changing the world, specifically when it comes to self-understanding and self-change. But Sunette asked me, what will I do when I get to the goat, and notice another goat in need? And then another, or perhaps some dogs that are malnourished, and then children requiring aid? If I want to save something that is suffering, where will it end? Because in those township, there are a lot of people and animals in need.

I saw the point, but then I thought of her previous statement about the ‘small things’ mattering and counting more than we give it credit for. I mean, this is the theme of so many movies, where even if you can save just one, it is worth it. The conversation went back and forth like this for a while, until all of a sudden Sunette smiles and announces: “the goat is here to explain herself!”.

Now, this particular friend of mine has quite a unique ability, to be able to communicate with existence directly, even to a baby goat on the side of the road. Believe it or not – that is not what is important. What is important is what the goat had to say. Once we got home, we sat down with the tape recorder and spoke for over an hour about this problem. The problem is cloaked in what seems to be a solution, but is actually not a solution at all, it is also known as the ‘saviour syndrome’.

Firstly, the goat had to clarify that she was NOT a small thing, as I had suggested earlier. She was actually a HUGE thing, because of what she represented. She was the symptom of a greater problem, a systemic problem that involved both humans and animals. She represented all goats, all animals for that matter, and therefor all suffering as a result of fucked up world systems. She also wanted to drive the common-sense home to me about two women pulling the car over in the middle of the townships where we could have been abducted and raped, where packs of wild dogs roam, and where I had no clue what lay beyond the first row of houses. So, I had to consider if it was worth risking my life for one goat, and if so, what good would I really be doing?

Secondly, I had to consider my time, resources and potential in this world. The goat schooled me about satisfying my emotional desires by spending time and resources on individual goats, when I could instead dedicate myself to the greater problem. “What happens to me then?” she said “I will die, and come back to the same mess, or worse”. Rather spend my time, abilities and resources on the bigger picture, which I can personally see starts with the human – human systems, because so long as there is human suffering and desperation, there will be animal suffering and desperation. It does not seem fair, but that is the way it is. If humans are taken care of, they can then in turn, look after the animals.

The last thing the goat discussed with me, was this emotion I was accessing, this overwhelm or sadness and desire to help and save. The goat asked me to look within, to see if I had any unresolved issues associated to this same emotional experience that I could have accessed and brought up and projected on to this goat. When I looked, I saw that there was a time when I was in excruciating pain. I had no money because I was in school, I had no doctor in the country I was going to school in, and I felt completely helpless with a strong degree of self-pity. All I could do was lie down, close my eyes and breathe as the pain changed from pulsating, to waves, to focused and intense, and never subsided.

Then , my mom caught wind of my situation and did what mom’s do best. She took action, got me to the emergency room, told me I was crazy to be thinking about money at this time, got me medicated, and from there I dealt with the rest. I felt like she had saved me, and it made me want to cry because I had just left myself there to suffer, I did not take steps to help myself, I simply took the pain and made myself get to a point of helplessness. The goat saw this and showed me I had not yet resolved certain aspects of my self-relationship with regards to this experience, and that I was projecting my experience onto the goat, wanting to save the goat like I had been saved. When really, this experience and desire was clouding my ability to clearly see the reality of the situation in front of me!

If you want to hear our conversation in full, it is available along with hundreds of hours of other conversations from the beyond that have been taking place for over 10 years now, almost unnoticed by the world!
Considering the Small and Not So Small Things with the Goat
Goat and Saviour Complexes
Goat and Practical Assessment