A Day in the Life of...

I called a friend last night to celebrate his 45th birthday. He's one of my best friends. We've known each other since the third grade. I was walking around the building because my cell phone is blocked inside. I spied a young, yet mature cottontail rabbit nibbling on the fresh grass. It went around the corner before I did. I eventually walked past it and it fled in the opposite direction from me, disappearing into the hedge bordering the north side of the building. I made several more circuits of the building while talking to my friend, never again spying that young rabbit. As I pulled out of the parking lot this morning, I saw it lying in the road behind the building seemingly asleep. My heart went out to it. Why? Why did it have to die at this particular place in time and space? Several thoughts ran through my head. I even chided myself about thinking of God as a human God, a rabbit God, or even as consciousness that I and the rabbit share. Whatever God is, it is more than I can ever conceive or understand. What foolishness! I see sunbeams pouring through the morning clouds, spy a hawk flying towards a perch behind a highway sign as I think of the stupidity of man - we destroy something beautiful such as tigers that took millions of years to perfect, actually 2 billion years to perfect, and we can destroy all of that in a geological instant. As I am almost home, I think of the loss of wildlife and how the wilderness is rapidly disappearing to become lights and concrete seemingly everywhere. I park my car and spy my two cats peering at me from the window of the apartment. I am happy, because I know that I am loved and I love them as much as they love me. Yet, they both might as well be as fleeting as that rabbit. We are all as fleeting as wisps in the winds of existence.

The difference between normal people and scientists.