The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter. The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
Pretty harsh, eh? But think of this: It is in the nature of Ant, like Bee, to work. Busily. And Grasshopper, like Otter, is the essence of play.
Does the eagle chastise the trout for failing to fly? Or the lion castigate the lamb for neglecting to use the sharp claws and fierce roar which, last I checked, it does not possess?
Can any creature be other than what it is?
Noodling away at this idea some more, here's this passage from the Bible (mind you, I'm not a religious sort, but as they say, take what you need and leave the rest):
Behold the lilies of the field, how they grow. They labor not, neither spin. And yet for all that I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his royalty, was not arrayed like unto one of these. Wherefore if god so clothe the grass, which is today in the field, and tomorrow shall be cast into the furnace: shall he not much more do the same unto you, o ye of little faith?Much more my style, I must admit.
I think I must be leading up to a discussion of personal responsibility.
You see, in these here United States, we have this notion that we are all autonomous beings - that we are responsible for everything that happens to us (the meritocracy myth), which also allows us to believe that we can have anything we want if we just work hard enough (the American Dream, also known as The Secret, in its modern incarnation).
The problem is that this denies the fact that we really have very little control at all over what happens to us, and no control whatsoever as to the hand we're dealt out of the box. We are each characters in a story that is not of our making.
This whole business of judging one another for living up to (or failing to live up to) some social standard or other is absurd. For instance: Dogs must think cats are mad - utterly insane. If dogs got to write the DSM, cats would be the very defintion of neurosis: Self-centered, narcissistic, utterly unpredictable.
This is the problem with the whole idea of morality, and people defining what is 'normal'. There jest ain't no sich of a thang, as somebody-or-other said (can't remember who I'm quoting just now - oh, Oklahoma, the musical - yes, Google is my friend :-)
And then there's the classic story of the Frog and Scorpion:
A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back because the scorpion cannot swim. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."
The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"
Replies the scorpion: "It's my nature..."
So - which is true? Which is 'right'?
Is the one who takes 'personal responsibility' somehow morally superior to one who, like Grasshopper, whiles the summer away? Or Scorpion, who is unable, in the end, to overcome his nature, even if it means his death?
Here I turn to Hamlet, who said:
"Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
In the end: We busy ourselves with complicated systems of thought (religion, philosophy) which only serve, in the end, to distract us from the real truth: We have no fricking idea why things happen the way they do, and we just have to hope for the best.
And though we
...may be goin to hell in a bucket, babe, at least [we're] enjoyin' the ride...
Maybe it all comes down to choosing the right story to tell about the character you've turned out to be...
