Babies present an interesting insight into humanity.
As I drove down Walker Road the other day I noticed a new face in a field; a sweet little baby donkey sticking very close to her mother and taking her first steps in a new life.
That I stopped and got out with my camera gives insight into the novelty that I hang on when seeing young elements of nature in its bloom.
I have been so overrun for weeks now that I haven’t shot nor wrote a blog and despite a habitual promise that I would “do so tomorrow”, tomorrow never seemed to arrive and another day and week rolled by.
I have been locked in a heavy battle against the tyranny of business failings and it has soaked my every moment in trying to outwit it. I am not winning yet, but I will one day, or so I hope.
And hope is the very thing that I wanted to write about this morning when I looked at the pics of the beautiful little donkey.
When a creature of any sort enters the world, they do so without any afore-knowledge and the slate of life is clean, waiting to be written for them.
It is this blank slate that allows them to hope that their lives might be good, full of purpose, or meaningful in some unknown way.
Baby calves have no idea that their final destiny is to end up torn into pieces and displayed in cellophane wrapping on a shelf in Publix. In fact, none of what we consider “livestock” do. And it is that lack of knowledge that allows them to prance about in a field, without a care in the world.
We too begin our journey with hope. It may be for a better life than we were born into, or to achieve the unachievable. But whatever it is, we are born full of it. Many people remain full of it later in life but in this case hope is replaced by shit.
There comes a realization in all our lives that there is very little say to be had in controlling our destiny and to imagine otherwise is a fool’s errand. Life has a way of beating the shit out of the best of us and rewarding those who tread on others and treat the world like their own playground. So, fairness becomes a concept that seems to get lost quite early on.
Those of us with a mind to can run around in circles desperately trying to find a meaning to it all and looking for something that makes sense in a positive way. Those without a mind choose religion and focus their mind away from this life in hope that there is another one beyond.
The real problem regardless of your choice in this matter is that hope is very much a two-edged sword. It can provide a light of positive belief or expectation in a dark world. But it also distracts away from the existence we are now locked in.
And at the end of the day, anything that distracts us away from the present is more than likely a disabler when it comes to making our existence (and those around us) any better.
Dante’s inferno when describing the gateway to hell has the well-known saying “abandon hope, all ye who enter here” but little did he know that hell is here on earth and those words are more likely inscribed on the inner lining of the birth canal.
… just a thought (albeit not a happy one).
