Already so late in the month. September is supposed to give us time to savor the last few sweet days of summer - those extra weeks after school begins but before we reach the equinox. But here we are already several days into autumn.
Everything seems to be moving faster this year. I anticipate endless summer days as though by believing in them I can make them happen, can stop the march of time. But it doesn’t work. Time just keeps passing – whether you believe in it or not.
Or does it? The philosophers and the scientists aren’t so sure. Neither am I sometimes. The past lives so strongly in memories. Dreams bring alternate life experiences that pass by in only a few seconds as I sleep. Who can say what is real and what is not?
Yesterday, as I lay reading in the hammock, a squirrel was perched in a nearby tree scolding me very loudly. It was easy to tell that my presence was interfering with what he needed to do. Watching him as he continued to harass me, I imagined how the world would look if I were able to hang upside down on a tree trunk like he was doing.
Looking out at the world through my imaginary "squirrel eyes" I was surprised to see how much broader my perspective was. When I look with my human eyes, I limit my sense of the world to the parts that I walk on. The world I live in is the ground, the place I put my feet, where my home is. Oh sure, I look up at the sky and admire the tops of trees. But I don’t think of them as places to go. They are just places I can see.
Looking through my squirrel eyes I see so many more possibilities. Trees I can run up as easily as I walk along a sidewalk, branches that are highways to another tree or a roof, the endless expanse of lawn, the garden, the road if I dare to cross it, the porch with its supply of peanuts.
There are so many places I can go and so many directions – up, down, sideways. I can hang upside down. I can jump. I can almost fly. Who knew a squirrel’s world would be so exciting?
When I finished musing about what it might be like to be a squirrel, I noticed that my admonisher was still on the tree trunk, still watching me carefully, but now he was no longer scolding me.
He was making a new sound, a long drawn out chirrup. Unlike the insistent, staccato rhythm of his scolding noise this sound was slower, more "conversational", almost consoling? Perhaps he had been imagining what it was like to be me and was offering condolences for my limitations.
I wonder if he ever notices that time is passing by more quickly?
Reflections on Life
