Life Sucks and Then You Die
How many times have we heard this? I know I have heard it and hardly ever used it and sort of sometimes felt it was so. Then this morning I just knew it is true.

As I walk around the park I get to this area where for some reason, a set of three or four trees seem to be the breeding ground for these small black fuzzy caterpillars. These caterpillars all mill around a small 50ft area of the dirt path, and to see all the ones that get squished is impressive. More squished caterpillars than live ones, I mince my way from clear spot to clear spot, trying to avoid stepping on them, and I check the soles of my shoes at the end to see if I stepped on one or not (I may be a poor Buddhist in many ways but on this one thing I seem to be OK, haha).

Life Sucks and then you die, because how many of those tiny wandering caterpillars make it? Such a blink of an eye brief life and in that brief life: make it down the tree, cross the dirt path, crawl 50ft and go up the other tree and meet up or do whatever fuzzy black caterpillars do. Seems pretty simple and yet so full of hardship, pain, and senseless tragedy. So many didn't make it. And what were the odds that during this brief week of fuzzy black caterpillar migration, the park people decide to spread fresh dirt on the dirt path, thus squashing even more of the lucky ones that had not been stepped on or run over.

Makes me wonder is there a god or gods? Maybe they are there, like me, watching this and wanting to help but not knowing how to because I don't speak caterpillar. I want to pick them up and help them across that treacherous perilous road, but I don't really know where they are going. What if I just take it back the way it had come from and now it has to do it all over again thus once more increasing its chance of being flattened by a tennis shoe? So I watch from above as they inch their way to who knows where on what errand I don't know. Is that what is really happening? Some god above watching us and all the horrible things that happen but it doesn't understand us and doesn't know if meddling would mean help or hindrance?
I suspect that it is possible, just possible that in that chain of weak to strong, there are those aching to help but just not knowing how and often instead of helping they end up hurting.
And so all I can do is avoid stepping on them, check my shoes, and keep walking my circles around the park until the next time I pass by.