Monday 30 November 2009

Interrupting Nature

So I’m running along the waterfront, Victoria’s Inner Harbour actually. It’s a blistery day. Winter is here. The seagulls are flying high and my head is down following the path, watching my feet and keeping the hat out of the wind. I come across a crab, belly up. Alive. It is being pecked at by a seagull. I think to myself, I’m going to save this crab. I stop and grab a big leg and chuck it back into the ocean.
I feel enlightened. Today I saved a crab. But alas, no sooner do I continue on when snoop dog seagull goes gushing back in after it. I keep going and think to myself, well so much for that.
I do a turnaround so travel back the same way I went. Upon my return I am saddened to see the crushed remnants of the crab on the sidewalk. Clearly I’d given the seagull an advantage. Not only could he swoop back in and grab the crab, he also managed to splatter it from his heights for faster eating.
Running always gives me time to think. Time to let my mind wonder. Besides clearing my head of the stress. All this talk lately about whether or not Climate Change is really man-made or just part of the process of the evolution of the Earth, got me thinking. I wasn’t successful at interrupting nature just now. In fact, I probably sped up breakfast time for the dear seagull. So are we humans a product of the evolution of Earth and has our progress to date been natural and is what is happening on Earth today, part of nature or are we humans interrupting it?
Not sure I know how to find the answer on that one. Do you?

2 comments:

Kathreen said...

Hmm... big questions. I wonder if William P. Young has some insight in his book The Shack when he writes,
"You try to make sense of the world in which you live based on a very small and incomplete version of reality. It is like looking at a parade through the tiny knothole..."
Sometimes I think about this when I'm trying to figure out these big questions. My perspective is only the tiny knothole view of the parade.

A Fresh Thinker said...

Thank you for that. Haven't read through that book. I look forward to now! It is a big question, one we can all ponder...