Wishful Thinking

If one lives long enough, sometimes it’s very hard not to be sad. It doesn’t take a lot for something unrelated and in passing to trigger a memory of a thing once beloved and now gone.  It also doesn’t take much for something unrelated and in passing to bring back a memory of something hurtful. The hurtful thing can be long past and no longer possible, but the “victim” must again gather up the soul and put everything in context.  While that can be relatively easily resolved with a recollection of how it was resolved in the first place, sad moments based on a loss are not so easily washed away. 

Early today some people in the apartment building were loading belongings into a moving truck.  As they were doing so, a resident standing nearby waiting for a chance to move about his particular business commented something about how could anyone get so much stuff in a motel room? Well, it is an apartment house, but once one gets past a one year lease it’s month to month and apart from the kitchen area each unit has all the aspects of a motel unit.  The presence of patio and community room suggest more; but individually speaking, the building feels somewhat like a motel.  If someone had a house they liked, it’s not replaced. 

Sometimes if someone really cares about something, it’s necessary to give it up to others.  Many people would relate that principle to adult children who choose to leave home for good reason. That’s not the only circumstance where the idea is applicable.   It’s common with pets.  People get the animal, realize they can’t care for it properly so hope to give it to a good home.  It’s also true of houses owned by people who can no longer maintain them and even smaller items that have a personal value of some sort.  If one puts part of oneself into something, once it’s gone a part of one’s life is also gone with it. 

“By their works ye shall know them.” 

The Animal Kingdom

There are, of course, different kinds of things in creation, such as living and non-living things.  Rocks will be dealt with some other time, especially since at least one famous person reportedly seemed to think he sensed life in rocks. The likes of spirits will also be dealt with some other time, especially since not only is very little known about spirits, but supposedly they don’t eat or sleep so any living is very different.  That leaves plants and critters.  Although some plants, they say, do things like eat bugs, so maybe they are a bit like critters, it would seem best to leave plants for another time as well.

“Critters” fall into three categories.  By that (here) is not meant things like land, marine and avian, or insect, human and other.  In many (not all) species those three categories are those that humans keep for pets, those that become food or other commodities and those that are free in the wilds of nature and the rest of that realm. Take rabbit for example.  Some are urged to increase and multiply for the sake of fur and dinner. Others are kept as beloved pets. And, still others live their lives – learning about life, bearing their young and dying off completely unknowing about and unknown to being either food or pet. 

The Bible and no doubt other seriously respected books say it’s all right to kill to eat something. But, somehow it seems a bit traitorous to care for something for a relatively long period of time for the sole purpose of one day eating it. Yet, it’s what happens and the cow, pig or what have you must sense it.  Even if it isn’t comprehended by the creature, the human knows it and must set aside that bit of reality or rationalize it out some way.  It may be the law of the jungle in more refined form, the natural order and all that; but somehow it’s hard to have lunch while reading about endangered species. 

Even in the animal kingdom some are preserved.