July 2, 2007
Learning by Example: If
Only We Could
When I arrived in the city where I have resided since 1981, my new
veterinarian warned me to keep my cat indoors. Too many city cars were a
threat to kitties, he said.
I
didn’t pay heed. I had allowed my feisty two-year-old feline supervisor
to go outside since the day I adopted her, which had already brought her
close to death and assorted injuries. But she yowled incessantly when
she wasn’t allowed to roam freely and I yielded to her commands.
One afternoon I was doing laundry when I saw a cat run over by a truck
in the alley behind the apartment building. While the crushed animal’s
body jerked in a macabre dance of death, I rushed in for a close look,
horrified that it was my cat because it had similar markings.
It
wasn’t. I spotted my pet rolling heedlessly in the dirt several yards
away. I scooped her up in my arms, brought her inside my apartment, and
never let her out again.
By
witnessing a small tragedy, I finally learned the importance of
protecting my pet.
A
news report about recreational sand holes causing more beach deaths than
shark bites brought back this sad memory. A father-son team of
physicians, in a letter published in The New England Journal of
Medicine, counted 31 sand-collapse deaths in Australia, the United
Kingdom, the United States and New Zealand since 1985.
The Associated Press story then quotes a woman whose own family suffered
a hole-collapse trauma. Mavis Gauruder of Fort Mill, S.C., talks about
coming upon a father and son who were digging a hole. “I asked them to
fill in the hole,” Ms. Gauruder tells the AP. “They did, but they looked
at me like I was interfering.”
She was interfering, even with the best of motives. She had every right
to share her family’s tale with the father and son and to advise them,
as my veterinarian did me, to reconsider their actions. She did not have
the right, however, to insist that they alter their behavior.
In
other words, she rushed in foolishly where angels fear to tread. And, as
is all too common and certainly in Ms. Gauruder’s case, such good
intentions do not earn the appreciation of those on the receiving end.
(Iraq is a much larger stage on which this same precept is playing out,
with horrendously deadly consequences.)
Are people simply ungrateful jerks? That may well be part of the
explanation. But it’s also the case that well-meaning fools violate
others’ free will by demanding – often through legislative fiat (or
military invasion) – that others benefit from their experience.
We
cannot benefit, however, unless we so choose. Even in human form, the
spirits that we are insist on free will, which then opens us to the
possibility of making unwise or imprudent decisions. We make so many of
these that the world is full of seemingly senseless and/or undeserved
tragedy and pain.
In
consequence, many conclude that either God is a myth or exists and does
not care about mere human beings. If there really were a loving supreme
being, surely s/he would do something about all this sorrow and
suffering.
God, however, is not inclined to rush into places the angels avoid. Our
creator has given us intuition and logic plus the free will to put it
all to good use. The fact that we are incapable of learning by example
and insist on personally experiencing the consequences of our decisions
is the best argument I can think of in favor of reincarnation. One life
cannot possibly instill us with true wisdom or prudence.
My
belief in multiple lives is also why the mendacity and bloodlust of the
Bush administration may infuriate me on an almost daily basis, but never
causes me to lose hope entirely. We really do reap the consequences of
what we sow, even if it takes more than one lifetime to come to pass.
Mr. Bush better hope he lives to a ripe old age.
© 2007
North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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