Jack Burns Lives!

“I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization.”
-Chief Luther Standing Bear

When confronted with the choice of reading The New York Times or watching the varying array of avian life outside my kitchen window, the decision was simple. Bankruptcy, war, terror, homelessness or the Tufted titmouse, Prairie warbler and Downy woodpecker?

It seems obvious to me the nobility of their simple lives far exceeds that of most men and is equally if not more so deserving of our attention.

It’s good that we have our non-human friends to free our spirits from ugliness of civilization. Especially those of us trapped in cities of concrete, steel, sirens and mayhem. They remind us there is another world, a simpler more beautiful place. And while winter gently cloaks the South in a blanket of grayish cold death, colorful life still abounds. Yellows, reds, blues. They’re all there, hiding in the cedars, pines and holly. In the remains of last summer’s wildflowers and in the blueberry. In the towering, leafless oaks, hickory and elm.

In the season when depression gains its firmest root, these little creatures bring calm and lasting joy. And while there is no meaning to their existence or even to my own, life is, as its often said, what you make of it. We can choose to live cooperatively or we can choose to make life a Hobbesian hell, a struggle against all, for all.

Why is that? Why are humans so prone to petulance and determined to wage war on all life? Why do so few see the needed beauty and necessary role of the warbler or of the lynx? What’s wrong with us that we seemingly place greater value on televisions and cellphones than that of a living things?