The Strange Things You Think About While Driving

I was driving one son to basketball practice, and we passed a field of cows. They all had tags in their ears, even the little ones. I wondered if they were the same tiny calves I'd seen over the summer.

And then I wondered if, as tiny calves, they'd had any inkling that they'd have to go through the ordeal of tagging. And, even now, wandering in the field with their mothers and the other cows, nibbling a bit of grass when they get hungry, do they have any awareness of what lies ahead for them? I think these are beef cows who enjoy about a three year lifespan. All the older cows in the field will meet their fate soon, but probably have no clue about what's coming. As did last year's cows, and the cows before them, and the cows before them -- history repeats itself again and again, with the same fate for each cow, and has for probably twenty years -- more, if this is a family farm that's been going on for generations -- yet the cows are blissfully unaware of what's in store, and what happened to the generations of cows before them. Existence for a cow consists solely of the three years of its life. There's nothing before and nothing after.

But what if a cow wrote down his experiences to enlighten those who would come after? Would he warn future generations to not go into the truck, no matter much he was prodded, so as not to be led to slaughter? Would he be followed by another cow who would write, and another, so that all the generations of cows became linked with an awareness of shared experience? Would any cows read it? Would they even care? Or would they go on their merry way as long as there was green grass, blue sky, and shade to rest in?

And then I thought of a recent Common Room post, and how much our situation as humans is like the cows'. Yes, there have been some people who have expressed the deepest, most profound essence of their souls and lives, forming a link uniting generations and generations of mankind telling us that we're not alone; people have been here before us, had the same experiences, asked the same questions, attempted to find nswers, laid the foundation of knowledge in art, music, all kinds of things. But in spite of their efforts, generally, like the cows, we prefer to live in blissful unaware ignorance, as if the years of our life were the whole of existence. Nothing of importance happened before, and it's not that important what comes after. The only reality is the time we're here, like a little bubble of time that exists in isolation.

I know we don't really believe that -- sure, we "know" that famous people lived and wrote and discovered and painted. But for the most part, we don't care. It's irrelevent to our lives, and probably inferior to what we're doing today.I mean, people know the names of Blake, Rousseau, Milton, Tennyson. But how many people have actually read what they wrote? Most of us are too busy reading the latest best-seller to care about old, dusty books written by 'dead white guys.' It's the same with music. We know what's current, what's hot, and hits from twenty or thirty years ago are quaint 'oldies.' Never mind that music has been slowly evolving and saying something for hundreds of years. We feel like real music started with the birth of rock and roll.

It's amazing how your thoughts can ramble while you're driving. I wonder if cows listen to music?