Spiders & Karma
“Dad! Spider!” The girl screamed, too young to care whether screaming made her too girly or weak.
“Hold on.” A father, tall and sleep-worn, came into the bedroom and quickly assessed the situation. “Where is it?”
“On the window!” The girl pointed.
“Alright.” Holding a small, empty coffee mug the father walked over to the window. With a gentle tap he scooched the small arachnid into the cup, closing one calloused hand over it as he stood and moved back to the door.
“Daddy, aren’t you going to kill it?” The little girl asked, confused now at this calm in the face of evident danger.
Her father paused and turned, his face solemn. The mug still held covered in his hands. “Why? What did the spider do?”
“It...it could bite us when we sleep!”
“Will that kill us?”
“Well...maybe if it’s poisonous?”
“Do you know how to tell if it is?”
″...no.”
The father’s face stayed stoic. “What if you killed it, and you were wrong?”
The little girl bit her lip. She knew from the tone of voice this was a test, of sorts. Not the dumb ones from school but the ones about life. The ones that made the difference between whether her father was really proud of her or not. “So what are we going to do with it?”
Bending down, her father held the mug out towards her and she took a step back. “I’m going to carefully put the spider outside, so it doesn’t get accidentally stepped on and it can be closer to other bugs it can eat.”
“Why?” She looked at the mug, still terrified of the contents.
“Because - what if you were a spider?” His eyes smirked now, his face loosening up a bit.
“What??”
“Well, your mother and I didn’t have children for at least five years.” He pointed out. “During that time, your soul could have been living in this house as a spider. What if I had crushed you, and ended your spider life early?”
“I wouldn’t have liked being a spider,” she insisted, shaking her head.
“Still - this spider could be somebody’s little child. Or somebody’s mother who passed on.” The mug held out steady, and now the little girl crept towards it with less trepidation. “Would you want to kill somebody’s child or their mother?”
“No.” She agreed. “But how do you know?”
“We don’t,” he admitted. “Which is why we treat all life with respect for where it is in its journey.”
“But we eat meat.” she protested now, understanding the argument but not agreeing just yet.
“We do. Where does our meat come from?”
“Auntie Joe’s farm.”
“Right? And how does Auntie Joe treat her pigs and chickens?”
″Really nice.” The girl nodded now from experience. “We make sure they eat a lot and are super happy! Auntie Joe says that if you kill a pig when it’s upset it ruins the meat.”
“Okay. So we admit we eat the animals, but we treat them as nicely as possible, and kill them quickly without too much pain. And we only eat a few animals, right?”
“Yup! I like veggies better.” The amount of hard love and labor leading to that declaration could not be understated. The little girl had no idea how many papa pride points she had already earned.
“Now are we going to eat this spider?” He held up the mug again, and this time the little girl had come close enough nearly to touch it.
“Eww! No!”
“Then why would we kill it? We don’t know that it’s dangerous, and we don’t want to eat it - I don’t think we should.” He waited, the fate of the spider hanging in the balance. His little girl thought hard, her face scrunched up in concentration.
“We shouldn’t,” she finally agreed. He smiled and wished he could pat her head.
“Alright. Then do you want to help me pick a spot outside for this spider? Maybe it can be somebody’s little boy or girl in another life.”
“Okay!” She jumped up and down now, grapping onto his elbow and joyfully following him out.
-----------
The little boy screamed, “Spider! Mommy, spider!”
Walking over, she shuushed the small child’s shouts. “Alright. Where is it?”
“Over here on the wall!” He pointed in horror.
Carefully, with a practiced hand, she took an empty water cup from the bedside table and scooted the spider inside, trapping it with one hand.
“Mommy, you’re not going to kill it, are you?”
Pausing, she tilted her head and considered her little one. “No. Why would I do that?”
A strange look came over the boy’s face, as if a fleeting revenant of wisdom had settled there. “I just...I don’t think spiders should be killed. That’s all. I was scared, but...it’s just a spider.” He looked at the cup with an expression of empathy, his fear suddenly switching directions as if he felt trapped inside the plastic tumbler.
With a smile, she nodded. “Me too. Let’s go find it a home outside, my little long legs.”
Relieved, the gangly little boy leapt out of his covers and followed his mother outside.
As the words of wisdom from ages ago echoed inside a little girl’s heart, her grown-up self led her child outside to find a home for another spider.
“Continual Change Preceding Death”
Who would want to be
immortal? For then, you are
no
longer
alive.
You simply exist, and continue existing, and that's
all there is.
There's no point,
anymore. Nothing means
anything, because
in the end,
all you'll have is your own
unceasing
existence, credits
rolling forever, lists of names scrolling by too quickly
for anyone to read, too slowly
to catch their interest.
Life without dying is
nothing.
It is day
without night; meaningless.
Endless sunrise isn't beautiful
anymore, we've all grown too
used to it.
Who would want to be
flawless? For then, you are
no
longer
alive.
You've reached the end, and now
there's nowhere else to go.
You stand
suddenly stricken
at the finish line, wondering why
no one's cheering,
until you look ahead and see...
nothing. For what is there to work towards
anymore?
...
Unless you prefer an
endless,
empty
existence,
wouldn't you rather be alive?
when i tried poetry (I)
Life, some say, is what you make it.
Life, the bard says, is a walking shadow.
Like, some reason, is an accidental occurrence,
A freak combination of the right chemicals in the right place at the wrong time.
Life is divine, with a purpose.
Life is senseless and wasteful, a sham mockery of eternal beauty that celestial being bestowed upon the mindless denizens of a jungle world.
Life is tough.
Life’s a bitch.
Life is all we’ve got in common.
Life is all we’ve for to live for.
Life is all we’ve got…
The way most of us are taught to view life is to chase after temporary pleasures. If you'll pay attention, everything we chase after on this earth is temporary, we don't take it with us when we die. While we are here, these things can disappoint us and that disappointment can wreck us. Are they truly worth it? I've been asking myself that lately.
I just think life is meant to be more than chasing after temporary and fleeting pleasures that entice and deceive and disappoint. I think we were made for more.
Life is a mystery, life is journey, a blessing. But to me, life is choices. You know, no one wants to loose someone close to them, no one wants to get sick. No one wants anything bad to happen to them, and despite this, it still happens, for some reason or another, the universe decided that it did not care what you wanted. So what do we choose? Do we decide 'I'm going to dwell on this and hope that something good happens to me' or do we decide that we didn't want that to happen, but it happened anyway so we'll just roll with the punches? Life is choices, it always has been. We are given a life, a beautiful life, so live it. Make the most of it. I hope this isn't too off topic but about a week ago, I was talking to some of my friends, some way or another the conversation switched to optimism and how positive everyone was. My one friend started talking about me and goes, she's always happy "she has a happy life" this honestly surprised me, because I had never really though of a life as 'happy' or 'sad' before, and after pondering this for a while, I stand by this. Your life can be bad, but that does not change your outlook on life, in fact, this is going to sound a little weird, but I am optimistic because I lost someone close to me, and I missed them, heck, I still miss them, and I think I will miss them forever, but she was also the most positive person I knew, she is the reason that I am who I am. And I guess I have come to peace with the fact that we miss people forever, but we can also still live our lives, and I know people who have had things like this happen to them, and have gone down a different path, a much worse path. So, to circle back to the topic, to me, life is choices. And I am aware that there are some things that you can not change, and there are many things I would really like to change right now, but choosing to live a better life, and choosing to be a better person is what makes your life good, that is the only thing that makes your life good, it is your choice.