a treasure called risk

spring arrived just over a month ago. in this last month, i have seen many wonderful images as well as those that simply haunt you…and stick with you. as i elaborate on the following, please be aware that the subject matter focuses on several morbid images.

the roads in May are a death sentence for animals, big and small: birds, mice, rabbits, cats and dogs. man’s world is too fast for them to survive one short trip to the other side of a stretch of concrete. every time i come across a new road kill victim, i can’t help my anthropomorphic thoughts that construct a life story for the animal and questions like:

 where was he going?

where does he come from?

was she going back home to family?

did she even know the risk of her crossing?

it all goes back to my childhood and watching a popular tv series called The Animals of Farthing Wood created by Colin Dann. you cannot help but develop sheer empathy for those helpless animals that are subject to humanity’s callousness and greed-driven desires to rape nature.

spring is the time of birth, but this birth is accompanied by inevitable death. everything that comes into being shares that same fate of an ephemeral existence. like those animals, we, too, are subjected to making that vital decision: should we cross the road?

a life without risk is a life that hasn’t seen the other of that road. and crossing the road involves a huge amount of risk. and this is where you have to ask yourself: what is on the other side? what is it that would make you take a step and cross over? or who is it that you would fight for?

 each one of us has something that we would risk everything for – that personal treasure. and it’s never too late for us to search for it. there is an example of a man who, sentenced to death based on too little evidence, spent decades exposing the injustices of the American death row prison system through his writing.

William Van Poyck has his own blog and his story was recently featured in an article by Chris Hedges entitled “Murder Is Our National Sport”. how human beings can lock up other human beings like lab rats and eventually inject them with deadly chemicals is something i will never comprehend. the death sentence is a cruel, inhuman procedure that has never managed to eradicate the source of our societal disease.

crime is like malaria – you can kill the mosquitoes, but the disease will remain. and often, mosquitoes get a better end than the criminals on death row. why does a man have to wait for years until he is finally killed in, what can only be described as a display of human cruelty? and how is injecting you with a needle, pumping you full of chemicals better than just having somebody cut off your head?

yes, it is a gruesome topic to discuss – but we shut our eyes when we encounter death and pretend that it has nothing to do with us. you don’t have to be a criminal on death row to consciously deal with this very real issue. Life is death. and death is life! it’s not a contradiction. it’s a complimentary fact.

For most of us, our treasure…our other side…is Love. Love for family, love for friends, love for things and love for ourselves. Love is the bridge connecting life with death. it is through love that we appreciate life and become wary of death. Love is the teacher of true risk! because to love means to risk everything. the man who is not willing to risk all he has and all he is cannot feel the full impact of love. and that impact, like the impact of a car on an animal crossing the road, is very hard and able to crush you. love is letting go of control and embracing life and death as constant travelling companions.

nature, despite what we may believe, is more powerful than humanity because it obeys its own laws. whereas we always find new ways to boost our own superiority. you see, we think we are driving the car on that road called life. we are like the animals but just cannot see the oncoming traffic. or perhaps it is too fast for us to see?

For many, life is about comfort and finding ways in which our existence can become easier. For some, it is about being treasure hunters, digging as many holes as it takes to find what we are searching for. it is the search that turns us into who we are. And it’s the struggle that makes us appreciate the end.

we cross the road knowing just how dangerous it is…but also know that that what is waiting for us was worth the journey.