Our younger son has two mice. They live in a plastic storage bin, sleeping in a little box during the day, and busybodying all night long. In the morning, their entire landscape is usually completely rearranged, and their leavings on the mouse wheel indicate ultramarathons they have run in the dark hours.
If you watch them closely when they are busily at work, you get the sense that their instincts are driving them to carry out specific purposes. But you know what they don’t – they were bred in captivity and their basic roles of finding food, building shelter, and protecting themselves are no longer necessary. We provide everything for them, and they are safe. They need not work or strive for anything.
Nevertheless, a mouse is not going to just sit around. Have you ever held one? They literally vibrate with energy. Their metabolism is on hyperdrive. They are motivated little beings with endless animation. So they make up things to do with their time. A lot of things.
I can’t help but watch them and think about my own life. I don’t grow my own food, I didn’t build my own shelter, I don’t make my own tools, nor do I fashion what I need in order to survive. I don’t even know how to do any of those things. It’s like I was born in captivity, with instincts to do a lot of something, but somehow unaware of what that something is, and totally lacking the skills to do it.
The irony is that my captivity is basically luxury. I’m not tied to the land; I dream up how I spend my time to earn money for food. I’m not tied to skills; I could sit and watch TV in all of my free time if I wanted to. In fact, Iuxury could actually keep me from wanting to learn skills. I’m not tied to physical strength or endurance, either; the work I get paid to do might actually require that I sit all day in the same spot.
For most of my life, I have wondered what my purpose is. No one wants their existence to boil down to using and consuming resources until they’re dead – a blight on the earth. In a society that no longer requires subsistence skills for survival on the land, what really matters? What is worth working for? What is worth striving for? Does earning money for something make it legitimately meaningful? What if you no longer need money for doing it? Are we here to live out our natural abilities, or are we rather meant for eschewing self-interests in favor of self-sacrifice?
This is not meant to depress; it’s realistic, Ecclesiastes-esque contemplation. I’ve always been plagued by thoughts like this, wondering if most lines of work and most goals are meaningless unless they help someone else’s emotional or physical needs improve. Unfortunately, the things I love doing most don’t fall into those categories. I am not a doctor, a teacher, a mental health worker, a fireman, or a garbage collector. Well, I do a little bit of some of those as a mother, but give me gobs of free time and you’ll find me writing about life or collecting beach glass for art projects.
When I review my life in old age someday, will it resemble that of a domesticated mouse – rendered purposeless by the luxurious culture I was born into but always striving for some sort of faux-meaningful daily existence? Or will I have some deeper wisdom that has allowed me peace for simply being who I am in this day and age, and that that is somehow enough?
You can also find this on the October 3rd Sun Days column on The Orcasonian here.
As humans our ability to reflect on our actions and events in our lives, especially as we get older, must be one of the most remarkable things about our species. This capability to “time-travel” either backward (or forward) is something I both relish and sometime regret, especially when I am scratching my Labrador on the couch late at night, and I think the only thing he doesn’t really experience in the his “present” is an occasional fleeting doggy dream.
Yes – my husband and I often remark about our pets, wondering if they think even a smidgeon in the past or future. If not, it’s a blessing in some ways, keeping them from judging themselves or others. Thanks for your thoughts, Michael. Love those stones you do!