Darkness and Fear

Last night I learned the power of darkness and fear. My walk out to the canyon had been nothing out of the ordinary, save for the dying batteries in my headlamp. I suppose after months of use, the three triple A's had finally met their end. Time to pay my electric bill. :)

While it had been a bit surreal setting up camp with so little light, I managed, and once in bed I promptly fell asleep.

In the middle of the night I was awoken by a creature walking across my chest. I startle, it scurries off me, and I fumble for my headlamp. Its pale light does little to illuminate the tent, and I am mostly still asleep, with only fear quickening my otherwise groggy awareness. At the very end of the tent I see the shadowy yet familiar silhouette of a field mouse.

For some reason, it's innocuous form fails to calm me. Having been startled out of my sleep has me in a weird mental place, and the poor lighting makes my tiny tent seem even smaller. The game begins, as I try to get the mouse out of the tent, and he runs like hell because he thinks I am trying to kill him. But I am at a disadvantage. I can't see what his happening, and I'm only half awake and slow. The mouse, on the other hand, is all over. He darts under blankets and around pillows. He even climbs the insect netting up the side of the tent, and at one point scampered up my sweatshirted arm and across my back. His frenzied evasion (and crawling on me) does not improved my addled state.

I am now desperate. My light is dimming by the second as the batteries struggle their last moments of light. The mouse has evaded me. I can't see him. I don't think he has gone, so I move the blankest slowly in the ever fading glow of the headlamp. I move cautiously if clumsily around the tent, trying to find the intruder.

After looking everywhere else, I pull back the camping mattress that in effect covers the entire floor of my one person tent. There, beneath my pad, in a curled and shivering fetal position, lies the dying mouse. In the mayhem, he had apparently sought cover under my mattress, only to be crushed by me in my frantic attempt to oust him from my home. One of his front paws is clasped tightly. The other paw shudders outstretched, almost as if to reach for something in his last moments.

I am flooded with despair. Not knowing what else to do, I pick up his broken body and put it outside the tent in the bush. Sleep came quickly, but not before a shadow passed over my spirit.

I awoke in the morning haunted by the nights experience. The death of my little friend had sunken in during my sleep, and as I hiked out of the canyon a sense of futility started to settle. I had moved into the wild to simplify my life. Intending to consume fewer resources, intending to take less for granted, and intending to ease my strain on the environment. But despite my best intentions, last night I had smashed an innocent creature under my weight.

In the darkness of the fading light and the haze of my goggy fear, I had caused a meaningless death. As the day warms I take off my jacket, and I relive in my mind the scramble with the field mouse.

Darkness and fear.

And suddenly, and in shocking completeness, it comes to me. Of course coexistence starts with desire. A desire to do good. An intention. But even my good intentions can fail to do good if I act in darkness and out of fear. If I want to do great good, or even, the greatest good, I must do more than want good things to happen. I must also seek to illuminate the issue. To see what is happening, so that I know what actually is and where the problems really lie. I must create light.

Similarly, when trying to do this greatest good I must act with faith, and not out of fear. While I had not desired to be violent, I harmed another because I was fearful. Because I did not have peace.

Desire, then is the beginning. The want to do good. But I also need knowledge, the ability to see what is so as to do great good. And finally, I need strength of character. I am perhaps unfinished and unready to perform what will be needed from me. For that I must strengthen my resolve. Wanting good, knowing how to do it, and having composure in the face of hardship. With those three things, I could see neigh impossible goods come to pass, solutions to complex problems and bring resolution in frantic times.

With these, I could do the greatest good.