No Laughing Matter
... Life Lessons from the Squirrels
The first thing I saw in the soft light of this new morning was the squirrel party on the bird feeders.
Quite a lot of my life involves yelling at these persistent acrobatic creatures, so the first words out of my mouth on this bright day were Go away! I clapped at them and waved my arms, and one of them performed an impressive double back flip dismount, then turned and grinned at me from the ground, probably feeling sorry for the cranky old woman who starts her day by yelling at squirrels.
They’re just being squirrels, after all.
This past Christmas, one of my grandsons gave me a copy of 100 Poems That Matter, published by Poets.Org
It opens with On Living, by Nazim Hikmet:
Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel, for example –– I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, I mean living must be your whole occupation. ~ Read the full poem here: On Living
The poet lived in troubled times. And let’s face it, all times are troubled; in every moment someone, many someones, are facing bleak trouble. In every moment, human beings in many somewheres are hungry, or trafficked, or imprisoned, or being bombed. Which, of course, also means that many human beings are oppressing and enslaving and incarcerating and bombing other human beings, and this is the most troubling trouble of all.
Even the world of nature – rocks and water, trees and toads and bugs and birds – witnesses and experiences troubled times. But we add so much more. Lord, have mercy.
Maybe you’re like me and most of the trouble, most of the time, has been visible only via screens or newspapers or history books. Occasionally, though, we see it up close. And sometimes, lately, we sense it lurking everywhere. For many, here in the US, it feels ominous, dangerous. And for many, it has always felt that way. The “good old days” never were, for many. We’re built on a flawed foundation, but it’s ours and we have work to do.
I will confess: I don’t know how to pray for the world right now.
I mean, I don’t have words adequate to the task. But I have learned am learning– slowly and imperfectly – that living is itself a kind of prayer, if I do it with attention and intention, if I open myself to the broken beauty in myself and in others, if I offer my wounded self as a crack where the light can slip into the darkness. And, on my better days, maybe I can see the wounds and cracks in other people as wounds that invite compassionate tending rather than the shortcut of judgement and disdain.
No matter what I do, the squirrels persist. They are unrelenting in their hunger, their scrambling antics, their cheerful leaps of faith toward what they want.
We “must live with great seriousness, like a squirrel”; and – like a squirrel – bring our whole being to this wild world, fling ourselves into the beautiful broken mess of life.
The conclusion of Nakim’s poem says it well:
This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet—
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space . . .
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now—
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to say “I lived”. . .
Oh, to be more like a squirrel: persistent and playful, agile and energetic and effervescent, launching ourselves with great seriousness into the wild work of waging hope in this precious world.
You have such a way with words! Thank you so much for sharing them with us. ❤️
Rebecca, we feed our squirrels and doves and cardinals and blue jays, and, yes, a rat or two on occasion. We also name the squirrels - Lefty, Hoppy, Rudi - and feed them by hand if they'll let us. Charles calls them "tree rats" in MN, and he'd like to do an mri on Hoppy, as H, too, and all of his kin, are great acrobats. Somehow watching them through the big sliding glass door at each meal brings us closer to the inner world and gives us a break from "out there" beyond the boundaries of the backyard. Today we encouraged one who was about to leap from garage roof to chain link fence to be careful and to go down the ladder instead. Another young one scampered among the four-foot sunflowers that have randomly grown up in the yard from the seeds we throw, and I thought, "This must be for him what walking among the redwoods is for us." Jim agreed.
The tiny lessons of survival we see played out daily - sharing, aggression, courting, peaceful coexistence - give me hope. If we could only live life in this present, right-now, in-our-faces moment and trust that we know who made them and us and provides what we need. Love you, friend!