Whatlitbe?

A wallaby whiskered in my ear:

What’s the difference between a human and an animal?

Here’s one.

A human is sometimes content to be.. ‘me – here – now’.

An animal.. almost always is.

* * *

Okay, an animal may (for example) feel a pressing need.. say, a bird, to migrate.

If so.. it does so!

Not discontented, because not disconnected. For it, need and fulfilment flow together, in an ever-living dance. How does that feel, for an animal?

*- Perhaps it feels an inner drive.. (a fluttering restlessness, to be ‘off and doing’; maybe an urge growing, reinforced and amplified, a communal excitement, to flock with a gathering throng of its own kind: ‘hey, here we all are, have you heard?, yes me too!, something’s happening, it’s time!’)

*- Perhaps it heeds an external call.. (an inkling of, a summons to, a far-off other habitat, ‘my right place to be’ now being somewhere over the horizon: ‘..that way!’)

(Both *-* descriptions may apply. The two statements need not be contradictory. They may be complementary. And in normal existence, I reckon they usually are. The animal’s contentment lies in finding.. or rather, in itself being.. the resolution of that prompting: its action is the answer.

Life-experience makes a statement, or poses a question, or issues a direction.. and the animal responds, by its behaviour making a query or guess or declaration of its own.. and so it goes on: a Conversation, a Conservation.)

Another example: a bear may feel its heart’s desire to eat.. and eat.. and eat.. And it does so; relishing as much food as it can happen upon. Mmmm, Berry berry nice!

Until it is roly-poly, jolly with happy healthy fat.

Meanwhile its heart’s desire has become.. to find a snug den. Which it does. Wander, nose, rummage, lurk.

Next it’s heart’s desire is simply to.. (yawn).. SLEEEEEEEEEP. And it dozzzzzzzzzzzzzze.

While the snow falls. Until Spring.

 

What an animal has as its life, is in each moment.. to do, with utter commitment and unuttered contentment, what it wants.. or is given.. to do.

(And.. 'unuttered' contentment, did I say? But that may only mean that we are  not well-acquainted with the signs of animal contentment. Why do birds sing? Did you know that bears purr?)

 Again – those two descriptions may prove hard to separate out, and may be truly united.. two faces of one coin, of which sometimes we may see one aspect, sometimes the  other. No coin has only one face.. Indeed, to be fair, such an odd possibility cannot even be countenanced!

Do we see duty and desire, craving and calling, as things opposed? A toss-up, a choice between incompatible possibilities? But.. perhaps the coin is perpetually spinning on edge, the faces' relationship a dual, not a duel.

 

Animal.. content..

Do we humans have to find life more complicated?