LIFE
by Jim Kaness

In your imagination, come with me back in time to when much of the earth was in its original natural state. A thousand years or so will do quite nicely. We are standing in a meadow dotted here and there with some low bushes and a few trees. It is a pleasant summer day and the Sun is shining. What do we need to live? What must each of us have to enjoy this day and the next?

First of all, we need air to breathe for man cannot live more than a few minutes without air. Try holding your breath and see how long you can do it. One minute is pretty good for most of us. And, what must we do to receive that air we must have? Why, just inhale. The air is all around us and we need only breathe in to receive it. It comes to us free of charge and free of any work to obtain it.

Second, we all need fresh water. You and I can go about three days without fresh water from somewhere before we become dehydrated and dizzy and disoriented. And what must we do to obtain that fresh water? The meadow we are in will have a small stream running through it and we will have to walk to that stream and bend down and cup our hands and drink some of that stream water. Two or three times a day will do. But the water is not brought to us like the air. We must find the water and go to it and drink. We must do some work to drink that life-giving liquid.

Third, we all need food to eat. Food supplies the energy our bodies need to continue living. And, what must we do to obtain that food we need to live? There will be plants growing in the meadow. We can eat some of the leaves of those plants, or the fruit they bear in season, or some of their roots. But we must look for the plants, and pick their leaves and fruit, and dig their roots, and learn which ones are bitter and which are good to eat. There will also be some game in the meadow. The game also needs air and water and food just as we do. We can catch and eat the meat of some of those animals but they are not going to just sit there and let you do it to them. They will run and hide and challenge your mind and your body to find and catch them. Hunting, catching, killing, and butchering game to eat is a lot of work, but we can do it.

Now, so far, there are no other people in our meadow- just you and me. And in our imaginary meadow we have to work hard in order to live from day to day.

Imagine one day we go exploring, across the meadow and up the hill at the side of our meadow to the top of the hill and look down on the other side. Oh my gosh! There are other people there in another meadow with some forest nearby. We see some different trees and different plants and they look good to eat. So we hike down the hill and begin picking some of the fruit on those other trees and it is really tasty. About then some of those other people come running up to us waving their hands and shouting words we cannot understand, and one of them raises up a large club and hits us! What the heck?

We have just discovered “civilization” and what happens when groups of people compete for food and other things of value. They claim that fruit is theirs and we may not have any! Who are they to say such a thing? How can they tell us what we may or may not do?

Now, in truth, they have no more “right” to that fruit than we do. But, if they are better organized and have bigger clubs than we do, then we have a problem. We have a decision to make. We can run away back to our own meadow and try somehow to forget the good things they have. We can fight them and somehow defeat them and move into their meadow and take over the good things they have, or we can somehow make peace with them and join them and share their meadow and its bounty --- but only if they will let us.

There, in a nutshell, is the whole story of our earth and mankind, and countries and cities and civilizations and politics and people. The people who got here before us- who were born before us- have already organized and set up the rules (whatever they are) for living with them and they will tell us newcomers how things are going to be (or else). Each of us has a decision to make. We can learn the rules and do our best to follow them and try to get along with our fellow human beings. We can learn the rules and try to improve them and convince others that better rules could be made. Or, we can grumble and complain and constantly be at odds with our fellow human beings and never agree to what they tell us. In the latter case we will be overpowered by them and find ourselves in jail or prison or dead- as they wish.

For each of us, the choice is ours to make.