Survival

     Human race is the only living thing in the world that has everything it needs served on a platter and yet has a thousand excuses as to why their life is pathetic. I happened to watch the Nature's Greatest Events series (awesomely narrated by David Attenborough) and witnessed how animals and plants have to endure so much to see them through their life. A polar bear, for instance has to struggle so hard for six months to get a bite of food as it is difficult for him to catch his prey when the ice melts in the summer. Imagine us living through such adversity? The mammals that live in the Kalahari desert in Africa have to migrate thousands of miles on foot to get to the Okavango delta to get food and water during the dry season. The Pacific Salmon has to travel upstream many many miles to spawn and die due to the sheer exhaustion of the travel it made, but it does this year after year just to keep its race alive. Out in the wild when a giraffe gives birth, the calf falls from at least a feet of height and immediately the mother starts nudging the baby to stand up. The calf keeps falling and the mom keeps prodding. This goes on for a few minutes before the baby starts to shakily walk and then sprint. The mother giraffe had to keep pushing her baby because she wants her baby to be safe from predators and the only way of survival for these animals is to learn to run as soon as they are born. There begins a life of running and their lessons on survival for most of the animals. 

    

    A lot of us human beings live a life of luxury, not with just the amount of money we make but also with the no of chances we get in life and in the no of opportunities we have ,to survive.  Yet we crib that our life is not good and always complain about one thing or the other because we are creatures of wants and needs and cravings. Even as babies we take a year to walk and more than that to run and speak and a very very very long time to take care of our own needs and fend for ourselves. I cannot help but compare us to these animals. Adversity is something that all living beings go through. But the human race is the only one that is equipped with so much to see them through any situation and yet we find excuses to cover up our incompetence or in most cases laziness and unwillingness to prove ourselves. I somehow detest a person being termed as an animal when he does something cruel or barbaric or inhuman because it is not fair to these animals that a man who has lost his self worth and innate humanness to do something very cruel to be compared to an animal (even if it is a wild animal) which dies a thousand deaths each day to see itself through it and wake up to another day of running and chasing and escaping. 

    Isn't there something we all need to learn from these animals? Aren't we all inferior to these animals because they strive hard each day to survive and we take our lives for granted? What is the difference in us having a sixth sense when we are no better than these animals which lives a sensible life everyday and always always respects the nature that had created it and lives to carry its purpose in life? What is our purpose in life and how many of us have truly identified it and how many of us are truly respectful of this universe that had created us? Given a choice I would happily be an animal and live a fulfilling life happy to have drawn some meaning out of the short life bestowed upon me.