The Right Path

 I've been sick for the past week or so, apparently not covid because I test negative, but with something similar to covid's symptoms. For someone usually busy with all sorts of things, it is a challenge just to rest all the time. My body is not up to doing anything, but it feels so terribly lazy to lie around! I listened to audio mysteries for a few days. But I found that being sick, I was more vulnerable to the scary, murderous parts than usual. They freaked me out. That was a little weird. Going to my laptop for some research on viruses, I read that sometimes a virus can affect your cognition too. Your brain can get swollen and inflamed just like the rest of your body, and that can cause a foggy brain. A positive outlook seems to have a good record for improving health, and even though I usually like murder mysteries, they were clearly the wrong influence right now. So I started watching nature shows on my new smart TV. That change in venue was wonderful! I'm still not well, but I am laughing and smiling as I watch beautiful scenes from all over the planet. At first, it bothered me too much to watch films that were focused on how we're destroying our world. So I watched all of the National Park episodes narrated by Barack Obama. The filming was incredible and I could just sit in my recliner and marvel at all these amazing places that have been protected. Feeling better, I decided to try watching another of David Attenborough's episodes today, and I was able to be enthralled even though often there were references to climate change and the worrisome future. I think that's evidence that my outlook has become more positive, and perhaps that will help me to recover from this lingering virus more quickly. Certainly it will help me have a better time while I wait.

Many of the episodes I watched featured certain animals and how they feed. And lots of these animals were mammals hunting smaller mammals to sustain themselves. The last piece I watched focused on the Antarctic, following the lives of penguins, walruses, and several kinds of whales. It was easy to identify with these creatures, having babies, caring for them, finding food for them, and in turn sometimes ending up as food for bigger animals. Even while I was watching killer whales surrounding a baby grey whale, violently tearing it apart as the mother whale watched helplessly, it was clear that there was no bad guy there. Life on this planet is an interconnected cycle, all of us dependent upon each other. And most of us living forms are food for others. 

Humans are different. We eat plants and animals, but no one eats us. That's in stark contrast to everything else. Probably because we've controlled our environment to a large extent, we generally do not have to worry about being prey to bigger animals (unless we venture into an isolated forest with tigers). This doesn't mean we are safe from violence. But the violence is from our fellow humans. Watching the news makes us aware that we have a tendency to kill each other in large numbers, not just in war but in everyday life. As I was sitting thinking about this, I realized that maybe our biggest natural predators these days in a modern environment are tiny microscopic things like viruses. And I seem to be hosting one right now, though I don't mean to give it the upper hand.

As I sat watching this morning, suddenly being so clear that we are the only ones who don't have to avoid predators creeping up and having us for breakfast, it left me momentarily flummoxed. So how do we fit into this web, I wondered? Somehow it felt wrong that we, of all the animals, had made ourselves invulnerable to being food for others. (Not that I wanted to be eaten, mind you!) But here we are, on a planet filled with a web of miraculous life, interconnected and balancing each other and the whole. And we humans are kind of sitting outside the circle. And then it came to me so clearly and brightly: our role is to honor and protect and learn from and sustain the earth. We have not always been smart about this. But we are in a position to use our resources and our growing knowledge to nurture and protect our mother planet and all its inhabitants. Even if it is just a mindset, an intent to do no harm and to help in whatever ways we can, that is the right direction. Even if climate change eventually wipes us out, we can use the time we have left to find a positive path, to be inspired and appreciative of what we have now, and care for the environment wherever we find ourselves.