I am in Clearwater currently, a small town in Florida. Recently I was twelve floors up in my hotel blissfully listening to a beautiful song through my headphones while looking over the bay. The hotel has huge glass windows, and I take great pleasure watching the sun, water, boats and birds. Watching the many birds flying over that expansive mass of water, I had an interesting thought.
Birds, and I suppose all animals, insects and even plants and trees, etc… have life flowing through them. It motivates them to live, and go on living, through hardship, death and the joys of birth. That I knew though.
No, actually I realised that they have a limited number of thoughts running through their heads. Usually to do with survival, such as get food, produce offspring, watch out for danger, reach a destination, and of course the emotions involved therein. But while they but have these few thoughts, we think of many, many thousands of things.
In the time they have a couple of thoughts flowing around inside their minds and motivating them to certain actions, we have hundreds – if not thousands. How fast we humans think is quite surprising, but have you ever tracked back your chain of thought. It’s so rapid!
Yes, animals and plants have life, they feel, they desire, they fear, they hurt, but their thought process is limited. That’s where man is so different to the nature that surrounds him, and why where animals and nature in general evolves to fit the environment, man fits the environment to suit him!
I’ve been in America for five weeks and will hit my home shores of England again in another five weeks. Meanwhile I’m studying about life (a wonderfully interesting subject, I must say) while also trying to write each day. I am certainly enjoying the combined experience!
Hope you are making the most of things.
Mark