Truths and passions...

Second half: truths.

TRUTH HAS VALUE

During political season, that seems to get lost in the media coverage (which is horrendous, by the way, but a different subject altogether).

It is, however, true.

Today, those wild cats are almost as wary of me as they have been since the beginning of this saga. But they are right to be wary, aren't they? The little ones are prey for other cats, for crows, for owls, for hawks, for death from the sky, for death from raccoons and perhaps foxes and certainly coyotes.

But most of all, these creatures are all prey to humans.

In a huge, complex world of food chains and natural selection, where life is tightly linked to predation, these little size predators are far from being safe. I watch the mother cat (herself in danger from a slew of predators larger and more vicious than she) teach her kittens to hunt for themselves. She does this by play. But once they are more adept and get the taste of blood in their mouths, they will be on the way to being able to care for themselves, and my chance at them may be lost.

Truth is often unpalatable.

These cats, and my campaign to tame them, have cost me my beloved mornings on the patio, feeding and watching the squirrels and cardinals, the bluejays and crows, coming to drink, to pick up peanuts. Now, I have to ignore them, and hope the wild cats are not around.

This world is not a soft, fluffy  place, where our actions have no consequences, or those consequences have little negative impact on the world. We are all a part of a vast construct that interacts in every cell.

We humans are inexorably changing the world.

The truth is we are doing this for the most stupid of reasons: just because.

Even as children we knew the stupidity of that excuse. Now that we are grown (and we are grown because we are capable of being destructive on a global scale) what excuse do we use? Cheap energy. Freedom of the individual to do whatever he or she wishes. Refusal to count costs and consequences. Chosen ignorance.

Worst of all: fear of acknowledging responsibility.

Truth has value.