One Squirrel at a Time

*as I sit outside on a fine Autumn day, leaves crunch in the background*

Hmm…what is that animal I hear in the woods?

*I silently wait for the mysterious creature to pass*

Oh, it’s just a squirrel.

…

Just a squirrel?!

I check myself.

How separated from wonder has our species become that a monkey-rodent who climbs trees, jumps fearless across branches — sometimes barely hanging on with their tiny claws — runs throughout the yard, kicking up leaves, chasing each other across horizontal and vertical landscapes is not a glorious, special sight?

Squirrels are so underrated.

In my homeland of North Carolina, this animal’s ubiquity as roadkill, or its irritating tendency to scamper back and forth with indecision when confronted by a moving vehicle, has earned him an unfair reputation for being a nuisance, and not a very bright one at that.

Yes, squirrels eat the entire feeder full of bird seed within one day, or simply knock most of it on the ground with their clumsy pounce; but what else do you expect when putting what is essentially trail mix outside — you know, where animals live?

Squirrels gotta eat too.

People are so easily bored with the natural world. Likely because it moves at its own pace — unlike the human, whose life patterns are limp marionettes of the technological, capitalistic, individualistic influences of society. To many, nature is only a background, an afterthought at best since, on a small scale, it does not seem to demand anyone’s attention outright.

Which I find terribly ironic because, if you haven’t noticed, Mother Earth is certainly demanding our attention.

As global temperatures reach record highs, forests incinerate, glaciers melt, sea levels threaten to drown entire land masses in only a few decades, coral reefs and sharks — the cornerstones of a healthy ocean — face extinction, along with an entire host of mammals, amphibians, insects, birds, and fish; hurricanes and natural disasters increase in intensity and frequency, deserts become drier, mosquito- and tick-borne diseases run rampant, soil runs dry and decrepit, food becomes scarce and people become malnourished, thirsty, endangered, terrified…

(But the jury’s still out on climate change, right?)

Backyard animals are an absolute godsend. Even without mentioning any of the butterflies, crickets, cicadas, frogs, snakes, turtles, and of course, squirrels — the avian class is enough to demand anyone’s attention should they listen or look around for only a few minutes:

The Northern cardinals, Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, downy, hairy, red-headed, and pileated woodpeckers, Northern flickers, white-breasted and brown-headed nuthatches, American goldfinches, house finches, song sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, common grackles, ruby-throated hummingbirds, American and fishing crows, Eastern towhees, brown thrashers, blue-gray gnatcatchers, blue jays, Eastern bluebirds, Northern mockingbirds, brown-headed cowbirds, mourning doves, Canada geese, mallard and wood ducks, chimney swifts, purple martins, Eastern phoebes, red-tailed, broad-winged, and red-shouldered hawks, and great-horned or barred owls pay daily visits to the feeders, trees, water- and landscapes of communities all across the state of North Carolina alone. The United States has over one thousand species of birds, many of which can be seen simply by looking out of our kitchen windows. Yet somehow that does not offer enough diversity to capture the human’s incessant need for stimulus. How can this possibly be?

From my observations, a disparaging number of people keep their gaze at the ground when they walk, rarely looking up to see the personality-rich, awe-inspiring beings defying gravity in front of their very eyes; nor the blooming wildflowers, the leaves changing, the mixed skies of cumulus, cirrus, and stratus clouds. The average person’s ears are not open. Each moment is an opportunity to graciously receive the dawn, day, and evening choruses of birds, crickets, and cicadas which offer to serenade us, shower us in the love of fine music with a live show to match. But instead the moments pass by, muddy, blurred, forgettable, void of beauty, and void of meaning.

People walk through state parks with headphones in their ears, or God forbid playing music out loud, destroying everyone else’s chance of enjoying reprieve from noise pollution and the brainwashing of mainstream pop hits. They loquaciously discuss the latest gossip with their friends, talking over the rushing of creeks, the whispers of leaves, the subtle silent symphony of the surroundings so unconsciously disrespected with their selfish chatter.

People’s shoes are on, rubber souls a barrier between this carbon-based body and the earth from which it came; from which we obtain all of the nutrients and constituents that give us the ability to walk, talk, and breathe in the first place. With these shoes the human race stomps without abandon, killing innocent insects, destroying mossy microcosms, creating disruptive noise they likely cannot even hear over the roaring volume of their relentless, useless, self-destructive, repetitive thoughts.

Distracted.

Morbidly distracted.

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One would think that only the emptiest of souls could walk through life without looking up, without shutting up, without hearing, without killing, without giving gratitude for the Sun rising every morning, for the tides moving in tune with the Moon’s cycles, for the Trees dancing in the Wind’s orchestra, for the insects who pollinate the very food we eat, for the birds singing their hearts out, and for the squirrels, whose playful traipsing and bouncing is a constantly extended invitation to put our troubles behind and join in their wholesome, humorous games.

Only the emptiest of souls.

Only humans.

In this age of information, where all of the evil of the world is bubbling up to the surface for all to see, we have no excuse for misbehavior. We must be better than the generations that have since passed; we must look further ahead. Better yet, we must look at what is right in front of us. We must face the world as it is, stop veiling our eyes with cloaks of indifference, stop hiding in our self-perpetuating caves of depression and anxiety. None of us is alone in our struggles to handle the weight of the world. We are all suffering together, except so far apart. There is a revolution underway — one of higher consciousness, love for all beings, honesty about mental health, re-learning natural ways of healing, and environmental activism. But not everyone is doing the work, and that is simply Not Okay.

Of course, not everyone has equal opportunity or privilege to improve their daily habits. Racial minorities are actively discriminated against, their “rights to vote” a complete hoax as districts are drawn in such ways as to misrepresent the actual population’s desires for change. A staggering number of people live in poverty, barely able to feed their families (or themselves) without working multiple minimum wage jobs (why do you think the unemployment rate is so low?). People on island nations are at risk of cataclysmic “natural” disasters, their entire infrastructure at risk of destruction, at risk of reducing their livelihoods to that of a third-world country overnight. Otherwise, populations around the world are at constant risk of violence or persecution, and as such are fleeing their very homes for asylum in countries who are constitutionally required to accept them, but find every possible loophole to reject them and direct them elsewhere, to erect walls along imaginary borders, dividing one human from another for no good reason at all (United States, I’m looking at you).

People in these situations are at a vast disadvantage in taking action to improve the state of the world, but they are by no means not taking action in their own ways. In fact, these are some of the strongest, most powerful people on the planet — perhaps because they truly know what it is like to face obstacles and overcome them. Privilege can be a weakness if left unacknowledged. It keeps people separated from the very real problems that affect not only us, but everyone and everything else on this planet. Those of us with a roof over our heads, with food on our tables, with time and technology to write articles about the shit that matters in this world, have a tremendous responsibility to step up. There is work to do, and it needs to be done — not tomorrow, not within the next ten years.

Right. Now.

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If we, as a species, could agree on some simple facts: that food and clean water are necessary for survival, and that the right to these resources belongs to every living being on this planet; that for plants to grow, we need healthy soil and sustainable farming practices; that food is simply not as good with chemicals all over it, and life is a lot more enjoyable without chronic diseases or losing family members and friends to them; that tigers, elephants, rhinoceros, sharks, whales, pangolins and all poached animals are beautiful and important, and should be protected, rather than slaughtered simply for rich people to feel temporarily good about themselves; that we should protect trees and phytoplankton, because they perform photosynthesis, which creates the very oxygen that we breathe; that it is nice to wake up with a smile on our face, to know our neighbors on a first name basis, to feel safe going to public events or to places of worship; that it is only ethical to have gender equality in the workplace and elsewhere; and that everyone has a gift, a purpose in this world, and should be given the education and resources necessary to develop and to apply it for the greater good.

Then maybe we would be willing to care, and subsequently to take action — to shop local, to carpool or use public transportation, to recycle, to compost, not to litter, not to buy so much plastic-based and single-use commodities, to plant a tree on Earth day (or any other day of the year), to only buy sustainably-sourced, organic produce and meats, and to limit our meat consumption considerably; to vote for deserving politicians — hell, to vote at all, to speak outwardly at town hall meetings, to donate money to nonprofit organizations, to raise a protest sign in favor of equality and environmental protection, to give our employees an ethical number of vacation, bereavement or maternity/paternity leave days, to volunteer our time, to give thanks before our meals, and to eat without distractions; to put down our phones, to close our computers, to stop pretending to give a shit about anything but ourselves on social media; and to instead go outside, take our shoes off, look up and see, open up and hear the words of our human and animal family, loosen up and feel the miracle that is the gift of this planet — this massive orb that rotates around a giant, floating space-ball of fire in exactly the right position for liquid water and life to exist, and to SMILE because this is here for our enjoyment, to GIVE THANKS, to GIVE BACK, to PAY ATTENTION, to CARE, and for heaven’s sake to LOVE ourselves, one another, and all of nature’s creations.

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Okay, I admit … this all may seem a tall order. Perhaps even an impossible dream spouted from the mind of an overenthusiastic optimist and passionate proponent for the goodness of humankind. But if there is anything that humans have in common, that is the ability to dream. Despite our occasional (or chronic) suffering or hopelessness, we all still dream of a world that is fair, peaceful, and simply not falling apart at the seams. This dream has been enough to keep us going, to keep us fighting and working for some kind of improvement since the dawn of our time. Indeed, much has changed, some for the better, and some for the worse — but never this dream, which stays alive in our hearts through struggles and through generations, and which motivates us to preserve our species, because deep inside our souls know that there is more to life than the myth of mundane existence makes it out to be.

The beauty in this human condition is that dreams have immense potential to become reality. Never before have you created anything without conceiving it in your mind first — every moment is a dream come true, whether created entirely by you, or by the entirety of the human species, or any other spiritual being that may accompany us in the infinite Cosmos of Creation.

In this waking dream, each of us has the free will to make choices. Arguably the most important choice that we can make, which paints the entire planetary picture of how we experience life, is whether or not we want to live in hell, or in heaven. There is no reason to choose the former; and if you do, you reduce yourself to a sinful mistake, rather than the blessed miracle that you are — and you do the same to everyone else. So let’s all do one another a favor and dream of ourselves as God’s children, and our earth as Heaven itself. Let’s make choices that promote this perspective, take selfless actions that help others and the planet, and encourage others to do the same.

You may not begin your transformative journey making enlivened speeches at town hall assemblies, spending Saturday mornings volunteering, or making huge changes in your company’s sustainability policy. Fortunately, should the state of the world often overwhelm you into paralyzing depression which makes taking action even more difficult (as it often does me), there are very simple steps that we can take which set us up for changing the world. The most powerful of which is living in the present moment. In doing so, we automatically express our gratitude for life. By simply forgetting about our worries — even for a second — and instead looking out, opening up, seeing, hearing, and experiencing the beauty all around us, we make space for appreciation. Appreciation frees our mind, emotions, and body from suffering. It gives us a lighter perspective, and facilitates change in our everyday lives. It is the vehicle by which you can tap into your full potential, and as you continue to develop this skill, remember to rejoice as your joyful dream begins to become a reality, right in front of your far-seeing eyes.

It will take time to develop these skills of mindfulness and appreciation — but I promise that an entire lifetime of happiness can start by simply looking out into the forest, opening up your ears to the crunching leaves, seeing a monkey-rodent galloping amongst the foliage, hearing its chattering as it plays, and experiencing the animal’s beauty. Change really is quite simple — just remember to take it one squirrel at a time.