|
dafremen
|
He was so tiny, I almost didn't see him there. A little flying insect, the size of maybe four grains of sand glued together, trying to find his way out of the sink. Apparently the sides were too steep and slippery, so he'd get about halfway up and try to fly when he started losing traction. And I have no idea if his wings were wet, or if he was just weary, old or sick, but he couldn't get up out of that sink.
And I suddenly had a great deal of compassion for the little thing and started hatching a scheme to get him out without crushing him. Then something stopped me and reminded me that not all tragedies are tragedies and that though I do not know what to call the great sentience that connects everything, I do know that I trust it, and that it works in ironic and unfathomable ways. I am not the architect here. I am George Costanza, attempting to play the part.
So I look to the sky and say, "Thy will be done." (OK, it was really the bathroom ceiling which needs dusting pretty badly, but I was focusing on the divine to the best of my ADD-ridden abilities.) Man! I'll be damned if not 3 seconds later, the little guy goes over the edge of the drain, never to return.
For a second, I felt bad. But that's the thing: I don't know if his death was a mercy or a tragedy. I don't know if my saving him would have liberated him, or chained him to a few more days of suffering in sickness. And I don't know if this was a test of my sense of mercy, or a test of my faith.
My mind turns toward our attitudes about charity and welfare. Is this a test of our ability to have faith in the very process which brought our race into being? Should we stand back and let it work? Or has that process come to a place where it requires us to develop more than just speed, strength, intellect and the ability to reproduce physically? What if it is using the same mechanisms which brought about our (mostly) mighty intellects to now develop our internal strength? What if this new trait, this new strength or intellect comes from a heart and not a brain? What if materialism is the mark of evolution's latest Neanderthals? What if the selfish among us are meant to die out like dodos while the new humans multiply quickly through acts of cooperation, goodwill, compassion and charity?
What if "survival of the fittest" no longer refers to our ability to feed, fight and fuck, but our ability to empathize with others? Did I just fail the test? Or learn a lesson that could prepare me for the next?
|
141102
|
