A friend mused today about putting animals and humans on an equal plane—that you cannot do so because humans are rational creatures. He is absolutely correct (and incorrect) all at once. Rational, maybe always notsomuch but thinking creatures that are always working towards our own personal rationale, indeed. Anyway, it reminded me of one of my favorite pieces of prose, “Living Like Weasels” by Annie Dillard. Its stayed with me since I first read it in High School and, to paraphrase, about how animals (in this case, the Weasel) moves through life without motive. Purpose, yes, but not motive:
“…I don’t think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular—shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?—but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel’s: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.”
-Annie Dillard “Living Like Weasels”
