We Humans Think We're a Unique Life Form, but . . .
We Are All Cut From the Same Cloth
The fool says to himself, "I am man, homo sapiens. I am capable of providing all I need. As things have been, so shall they ever be."
We think we are fully capable of surviving anything. We think what we know is what there is. We think our experience is everyone's experience. We think all life exists to feed, amuse, or annoy us. We think we're smart.
These are the lies we tell ourselves to avoid the pain of facing our reality. Our reality can be unpleasant, and therefore must be softened lest we become upset. Mommy and Daddy feel bad if their little precious feels uncomfortable when discussing the inexorable and inevitable cycles of existence. Do what we will, we cannot change birth, growth, reproduction and death. These are the boundary events that define life.
And life is hard. That is another aspect of reality that we do not like. So we devise things and processes to reduce the harshness of living to its lowest possible level. We want to be always comfortable, always at ease, always happy. We do not care the cost of that comfort. We are, after all, the center of our own universe, so if I can afford it, if I can make it happen, it must happen. I really don't care what might die to make it happen. I want my needs met. Now.
And die they do. Nothing is free. Every meal, every glass of water, every bath, every silk sheet comes from something, and odds are that thing was at some point alive. For every thing we enjoy, something dies. It is a given.
It's not just the sustenance part of our life equation that we must own, it is our annoyance that kills as well. We don't like it, so kill it. That certainly cannot sound foreign to our ears. Insects, odd looking animals, even people who make us uncomfortable, we see to it that they are removed from our presence. We do not wish to see them.
What we fail to understand is we are killing ourselves. By divorcing ourselves from the daily interaction with all life, by failing to fulfill our part in balancing the give and take, we are eliminating the very things in this world that keep us alive.
No, we are not smart. Not nearly as smart as we think we are.
It is not possible to find a way to call mankind's impact on our world a thing that works. I wish I could.
"Why are you telling me all this horrible stuff?" she says with annoyance.
So that, perhaps, you might start to own the impact your life has on your world. So you might start to see yourself not as the center, but as one in one hundred billion participants in the dance of life.
So that you might live. So that in living, you give as much as you take. So that in your passing you leave more than you found. So you do unto the planet what you would have it do unto you.
That, my dear, would be a thing that works.
