This child who looks so much like my dead mother. Standing hesitantly at the foot of a giant. Perhaps she’ll enter into that dark wooden cave, or at least look into it. That’s what so many of us aren’t willing to do. Look into our own dark cave, at what drives us, at what pushes at us without our even knowing how or why. I also wonder how long will that tree exist, how long before it burns or dries up from drought or whatever other man-made disaster might cut its life short.
These two thoughts are bound together, because without the willingness to look into that cave, we are destined to be consumed by it. It is darkness that is killing our planet. Our inhumanity, our wanton and careless willingness to use what is given to us without any thought to what role it plays in our own survival. We don’t give a thought to ‘should’ we use this or destroy this or wipe this species out. We fail to question whether what we consume and destroy is beautiful, does it add to the quality of our lives, does it add, just by its very existence, to our spiritual or emotional or even our physical well being.
We don’t question our right to use up every resource available to us, co-opt it from other human populations, destroy habitats, forests, wipe them out in the name of our own sustenance. Aren’t there other ways to live? Aren’t there other ways we can survive or have a quality of life?
I too am culpable, and this is something I struggle with daily. I drive a gas-guzzling truck. Much to my grief, I drive a car and have run over and hit animals with it on the road. I buy my food from a store, mostly without knowing where the food came from. There is no connection between me and the animal or plant that I’m eating. It’s effacement at its finest. Eating an animal that was killed by unknown means, in an unknown way, in an unknown place. Probably killed under horrible circumstances I don’t even want to imagine. Of course, I could never eat an animal I knew personally. Is this the height of hypocrisy?
Yes, I have my own cave. I have been dancing around it for a long while now. I’ve explored many levels of this cave for a lot of years, but lately, I’m weary of exploration. Nothing in that cave feels very good and I’m tired. I’m weary of self-awareness and life lessons and digging deeper. I once dug ditches, literally, for three days and I hated it. I’ve likened exploring my internal cave to opening up long-forgotten tombs and letting the light in. A nice image, but my pick axe has become dull and my arms are tired.
But something keeps nagging at me. That dark place, and the little girl, standing hesitantly in front of it. Or is she coming out of it? Watching me, wondering what kind of being I might be, trying to get her bearings after being in all that darkness.
Maybe that’s the truth of where I am now. Too much time in the dark. Coming out into the light and trying to get my bearings. Maybe that is what has put me into this limbo, this place of waiting. Maybe I’m waiting until I know what kind of being I might be.