Last words
For the last couple hours, I have been listening to a life struggle on the brink of death.
I refer to a fly that is trapped somewhere in my room. I don’t know precisely where he is, but I can hear him. Once every minute or two, he frantically attempts to escape from where he is stuck. It makes a buzzing sound. In the last hour, that buzzing has become less frequent. All I can think is, gosh, that noise is irritating. I hope it stops.
Do you know what it means when the buzzing sound stops? It means the fly is DEAD. It means that there was a living creature somewhere in my room, struggling to stay alive, and I sat by listening to his death pleas, doing nothing, and the only thing that crossed my mind was, “gosh, that noise is irritating”, followed by, “hey, I should blog about this!”
If this fly was a human, you’d be coming at me with the police and handcuffs. If this fly was a dog or cat, you’d be coming at me with pitchforks and PETA. But this fly is a fly, and everyday in the world people are putting flies out of their misery, and nobody bats an eye.
If we bring humans, household pets and household pests down to their simplest form, they are all lives. They are all alive. They all have eyes. They all have hearts. They all even have nervous systems. Earlier this month, I dished out a small portion of my savings fund to save my rabbit’s life. There are people in the world who hunt rabbits for fun. Who am I to decide who’s more superior to live?
If we weren’t the ruling species on this earth, we could have just as easily been a fly in the hierarchy of species. That is to say, if humans weren’t designed to specifically rule the world, another species could have, and we could have just as easily been flies in their eyes. “But we aren’t!”, you say. “We’re the ruling species here, so this whole point is moot.”
But is it? Just because we’re the superior ones here and now, does that mean we have the right to decide what lives and what dies? In the end, we have at least one thing in common with every other living creature on earth, big or small: death. We’re all going to kick the bucket one day, and there isn’t a single thing we can do about it. So if none of us are immortal, what qualifies us to make any kind of decisions or judgments about life and death? What do we even know about this?
Just because flies seem insignificant to you and I, does that make them insignificant to the world at large? What sheer audacity, what outrageous boldness we have to assume the world revolves around us, that we are better than another. We all share the same mortality. You can find a cure for cancer and rule the world, but you will eventually meet the same fate as the fruit flies in your kitchen or the rats in the sewer. All the earthly accomplishments in the world won’t save you from that.
In a way, death has a way of humbling us. We think that we can make judgments about which animals to keep as pets, which to eat for food, which to wear as clothes, and which to swat or lay traps for; we think we’re superior, we think we’re invincible, but one day, we will share the same dust of the earth as the rats and the flies and all the other creatures we think ourselves above of. Eat your meat, hunt your animals and swat your flies—but one day, the joke will be on you.
So I stopped everything that was I doing, hunted down the fly, found him in my garbage can, ran the garbage can down a flight of stairs, took it outside and opened the lid. I hope he got out okay, because in the end, a life is a life, whether it belongs to me or the fly trapped in my garbage can.
It’s an interesting idea. But I killed a huge spider this morning and there was NO WAY I would attempt to gently set it free outside. So no regrets.
People die all the time. They die of diseases, wars, hunger and old age. As far as we know, we ARE somebody’s flies.
Reply: Hahahaha, good point!
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:43 pmI love this post.
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:02 pmI wouldn’t mind if there was something higher up than us on the food chain. I think we are way too arrogant for a ruling species. Someone needs to put us in our place. :)
Reply: While I’m happy that we’re the highest on the food chain because I’d be terrified of the idea of something hunting *me*, I totally agree that we are way too arrogant and need to be put in our place!
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:48 pmGreat post. You’re touching on a lot of deep issues here… even masked under the story about a fly.
But as great as idealism is, it has to be T-boned by practicality somewhere. As humans, our capacity to love is finite. We can’t mourn for everybody, nor can we care for every creature. I struggle with where the line is though, I guess we all do. We can’t save everything.
Life is sacred, but only because death is a reality.
Reply: That’s very true.
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:02 pmI agree with you. Animals wasn’t created for humans – just like women weren’t made for men, black people weren’t made for white and so on!
With that said, a fly is just a fly. I am no expert, but I am pretty sure the cognitive reflections of a fly very close to none and though it might be wrong I think that is what makes a human superior of a fly..
October 24th, 2008 at 2:19 amGood blog! Personally, I don’t allow flies in my home because they have hurt me. (I swear they have a little stinger like bees.)
If I can think of one thing that makes flies useful, that would be dead bodies.
Example: A group of medic workers went door-to-door after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans. Every house that had “X” on it meant that no bodies were in there. One of the workers was suspicious of one “X” house because he noticed flies buzzing all around window on second floor. He decided to go in with another medic worker. They found two bodies: one dead and one alive. So, the group retrieved both.
I suppose we have flies to thank for….
Reply: Oh wow, that’s a fascinating story! Thanks for sharing, Roro. :)
October 25th, 2008 at 5:13 amWhen it comes to bugs in general I look at it this way…. I will try to get them out if I can… if not well they are in my environment. When I’m around bugs and I’m outside, I leave them be.
Reply: Same here, although usually, I’m running FROM them, even if I’m in my own home. =\ … So I get someone else to escort them outside. :P
October 25th, 2008 at 12:20 pmThis is never easy.
March 18th, 2009 at 4:21 pm