Earlier today I was angry. Stomping around angry. The kind of anger that sends your cats and your kids for cover. I was angry because of comments attached to a posting at another weblog. Foolish comments. Hateful comments. Generating the type of anger that sends you out of your chair, causes you to yell at your computer, makes your head ache. You know the kind of anger I’m talking about.
I tried to write, a new weblog posting or to the RDF book, but couldn’t focus because of the anger. Finally, I gave up and went for a walk at Powder Valley. Sometimes a brisk walk works where all else fails.
No one else was around as I stomped along the trail, disregarding everything around me, lost in my anger, in the words that created my anger. I ignored the squirrels and the chipmunks and the wind through the trees and the crickets and the sounds of the creek and the wonderful smell and feel of fall. No room for all of that when one is consumed by anger.
And then, just as the trail climbed past a stand of trees, there they were. Five deer not more than 20 feet in front of me on the side of the trail. I stopped dead. They stopped dead. We just looked at each other in surprise. When I continued to hold still, the younger deer resumed eating and the herd began to slowly make its way past me, ever so close.
I looked into the eyes of the oldest deer, the one that seemed to be watching over the herd. They were the eyes of a being completely and utterly at home within its world. For all of humanity’s surperiority, for all of our art and music and writing and intelligence and culture, few of us will ever have that look in our eyes.
I spend too much time reacting to people who make me angry and not enough time to those who make me smile. That’s why I’ll never have that look in my eyes.