If you haven’t had the opportunity to watch an episode of the 11 part series, “Life,” narrated by Oprah Winfrey, you’re missing something special. Presented on the Discovery Channel, the series “reveals the most spectacular, bizarre and fascinating behaviors that living things have devised in order to thrive,” according to a http://www.discovery.com press release.
The episode I saw focused on several remarkable bird species, including the Lammergeier, also known as the Bearded Vulture. This large vulture breeds on crags in high mountains and feeds on the bones of carrion left by other predators. What is amazing about this bird is that it not only selects the bones with the most fat content, but it drops them from great heights on rocky plateaus to break them apart. Their digestive juices are more corrosive than battery acid, making an easy meal out of even the toughest bones. For more information on this fascinating bird, visit naturalist and author Pat Bumstead’s blog, http://wildtracks.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/bone-bustin-birds/.
I likewise have been keenly observing the brouhaha around Tiger Woods’ return to the pro golf tour. It often amazes me to see what can thrust itself onto center stage of the consciousness of so many, no matter how distanced the observer might be from the actual event or person. Life is full of fascinating elements, isn’t it?
What occupies the center of your attention from moment to moment? Human consciousness can be such a fickle and unpredictable thing, yet for each one there are typically several themes that dominate one’s private thoughts. Those themes are related to deeper patterns of orientation in the individual and they also tend to form the lens through which the individual sees the world around him or herself.
For some, the theme of either victory or failure tends to occupy a central place in consciousness. For others, it might be the theme of struggle or cooperation. In many ways, the themes tend to shape up according to basic assumptions about the nature of life itself. Is it nasty, brutish and short as Hobbes asserted or is it fundamentally harmonious, pleasant and progressing upward? If you were google and I typed “define: life” on your search screen, what definitions would you return?
No doubt the definition you would give is in part moulded by your life experiences, your education, your upbringing and so on, but independent of all of that, what really do you feel about life? Is there hope for humanity in your heart and mind? Or are you, and consequently your fellows, a lost cause?
In my estimation the way that humanity in general views life seals the fate of the natural world. The way that we care for one another, that we think about ourselves, that we handle the harvest of yesterday’s planting, has an immediate and powerful impact on the planet we share. To me it doesn’t much matter what gets you to think about how precious life is, in fact, all life experiences – good, bad or indifferent – can be used to fuel your passion for understanding, exploring and bettering life on our planet.
Gregory Hake 
Pingback: Life: Thoughts « Sea Orchids BLOG
I read your posts everyday and greatly enjoy considering the points, sharing their inspiration with my family and friends where the varying topics may apply. It is my sincere intention to be a means for hope for humanity, and that my life my fellows’ are not a lost cause because of an underlying flawed belief in my heart. Every click on Gregg Hake’s Blog is a worthwhile one – thanks for sharing words full of life each day!
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I love this quote by Anton Chekhov, “Reason and justice tell me there’s more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.”
We can have a life that is constantly expanding. I truly believe we can create this but to succeed we have to understand the order and the matrix. We can’t stop learning or let ourselves get beaten down by our journey or hemmed in by the latest conventional thinking. There are those that would still see the world as flat. Our fate is not sealed until we stop seeking to understand humanity’s role in this creation.
We see breathtaking beauty in music, mathematics and the natural world; we are a part of that too. Living is contagious let’s not let our inclination to fulfill our part be withered by anything or anyone.
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Love the Google idea. Simple and it takes honesty with ourselves. Good place to start if we want to inventory where we really are. We can get better at being human.
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It’s one thing to receive a gift when you’re a young child, it’s another thing to stomp on the packaging bubble wrap! If you’ve never had the satisfaction of popping bubble wrap you really must go get some today and experience it first hand. But the joy of watching a child pop bubble wrap is precious…..now that’s experiencing life to the fullest. And to witness children doing it together, not one bubble is left unpopped, “let’s make sure we get them all, hand in hand we’ll stomp till the job is done!”
And then there’s the way a 3 year old yells from the bathroom, “I need help!” – doesn’t matter if house guests are present and the bathroom door was left wide open, “I’m on the potty and need HELP daddy! Often not something we do as adults….that is, admit openly that we need help.
Then the “experience” of eating – it’s not just putting food into your mouth and having light table conversation, it’s the whole sensory experience of food and everything associated with it – the way it mixes, the way it flies across the table, how it feels smooshed between fingers and in hair.
(not something i recommend experiencing first hand at a dinner party with adults – but then again??! 🙂
What’s all this got to do with today’s post – Children hold nothing back, they go all out experiencing and discovering the preciousness of life on every level – literally!
Life really is a joy when we choose to see it that way – thanks for the reminder of how my google would define “life”
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Great points. Using the Google search as an example hits home. No better time than right now to punch in the search terms for my character and see what comes up.
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