New York's Central Park Zoo reported one of their prized peacocks recently escaped. But that's not the story. After he spent the night on the ledge of a nearby building, watching the chaotic city below, he flew straight back to his cage at sunrise. Zoo director Jeff Sailer said: "I think he likes it better here."
I say: Who wouldn't?
Think about it. The sales of Mozart continue to top Rap decade after decade. People continue to buy cats and dogs with increasing rates year after year. And damn near anyone who has even flirted a moment with fame continues to write their-side-of-the-story memoirs. What's going on here...?
Isn't it modern humanity's need to find some kind of order in chaos? to hunt for meaning in disarray? to hope for sense among the senseless? I think so. I think maybe that peacock did too.
It would be foolish to argue our times are the worst of times. At the same time, it would be presumptuous to suggest they are the best of times. True, humanity has left the cave, tamed the beasts, conquered time and space. Why it's even aspiring to total genetic engineering, to the stars, to immortality itself. And yet such enthralling pursuits have taken us off the solidarity of the land, jammed us into teeming cities, brought us into violent competition with other pursuers. There's always a price for progress.
Visionaries are willing to pay that price. God bless them their courage, for the rest of us depend on their blazing new frontiers into which we can later travel safely. But safety -- order, meaning, sense -- are elusive in these exciting days. Perhaps mainly because everyone and every nation is pushing and shoving for the very same brass rings.
With only so many rings to go around....well, at least I have my Mozart, my faithful companion, and that happy-ending memoir.
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