There’s a lot going on outside my office window by the palm trees: sparrows are stuffing the hungry mouths of their young and flying around. At the top of the palm tree, busy parrots are building their nests. The atmosphere is bustling with activity. I sit at my laptop and marvel at the difference between animals and humans. While I consciously try to get up every morning after a good night’s sleep, greet the day and get in the mood for what’s to come, the sparrows do it all as a matter of course. How often do I fail and am not prepared to make a sacrifice? The animal doesn’t seem to have to activate itself. It performs a duty that is deeply rooted in it and in which it is perfect. Humans are multi-talented and have to work hard to achieve perfection. In return, I, as a human being, am allowed to become aware of my inner, very individual duties and act in freedom. In my understanding, this means having an intention, a thoughtful motive for my actions and acting according to the nature of things. This is how sparrows can feed their chicks, do it right, but do not enter a space of consciousness. Freedom is demanding and we as humans can only struggle for it and practice it.
A military helicopter tears up the sky. Covers the twittering.
Whoever claims that war is “just”: Even if the motives of a warring party could be grasped rationally, war per se is so far removed from the nature of human beings that it will always lack any legitimacy. It is more likely that forces are at work here that do not like freedom in people and to which people who are not alert can quickly find themselves at the mercy of. Not the animal. It offers these forces no place to dock. Thus, only external suffering is inflicted on the animal when these forces make human actions unfree. Allowing unpleasant things to happen. In factory farming, in war, in the littering of our oceans… And animals, unlike humans, do not grow from suffering, they do not develop any further from it.
Thoughts on a morning, at the window and the desire to become a little more awake and peaceful as a human being.
