Here We Are...

Doing circles around a star. Clothing hiding the animal beneath it. Longing for the affection of others. Focusing our lives on the opportunity to propagate the species. Going through the motions without asking questions. Unsure of our purpose. Living because we do. Distracting ourselves with our day-to-day lives. Waking up and going to sleep with not much in between. Working to feed ourselves. Desiring arbitrary status symbols. No inherent value in anything...

Except relationships. They are the real meaning of life. The greatest people aren't those with power and control, they are those who make the lives around them better. And that takes no money or prestige. It takes caring and interest. It takes selfless decisions.

That's the purpose. To make every decision and action with diligent care. To know that our time is short. To know that we have the power to make or break a person's day. A smile. A concern. Or simply to listen.

When all the false motivations and superficiality is stripped away, we are simply animals sharing a confined space, being driven by unseen instinctual forces and doing what we do because that's all we know to do.

We exist on a small rock. We are small. We are insignificant to it all. But, we are significant to each other. We mean the world to each other.

But, that world is at odds with itself. People kill each other. We battle. Maybe it's because at the core we are all the same. We're the same animal. The same desires, the same wants and needs. And like any animal we do what's in our power to ensure we get those things.

However, unlike other animals, we can decide. We can decide that sometimes getting what we want isn't worth the consequences to others.

But, of course, we're selfish. We have to be. We can't give of ourselves to the point of having nothing left. Even more so, we have the absolute right to personal happiness. But there's a line. A line that too often gets crossed. When our own selfish desire devours the good of all. That's when things go bad.

And, more often than not, that's how things are. We aspire to fit a mold. We want. We covet. We won't stop until we get it. We have perverse goals. We want things that make others jealous. We want to proclaim our superiority with material possessions. Possessions that are fleeting, meaningless, and pointless.

More than what we achieved, our real mark on the Earth should be with those whose lives we have touched. Those lives that were a little brighter because of us. People hurt. People cry. Nobody can do it alone. We need each other more than things. That should be the central focus.

It's tough, though. We're all preoccupied with ourselves. We're all stuck in our own heads. We're self-centered. When we hurt, no one else matters. When we hurt we want someone to be there for us.

But, too often we run. We don't want to deal with it. We take each other for granted when that's all we really have.

Magic Breakfast Land

Every time I see that McDonald's commercial where the little girl asks her parents where breakfast comes from, I always think that it'd be funny if they told the truth rather than come up with some "Magic Breakfast Land."

So...

"Where does breakfast come from?"

"Well, honey, it all starts with the birth of a cute little piglet. You know, like the one in Charlotte's Web? Eventually, after spending most of its life in a cramped feed lot, they send the fattened-up little piggy to a processing plant. That's where the magic occurs. First, they send its soul to piggy heaven. Then they gut it, slice it up into pieces, and turn into the sausage you're eating right now.

Oh, sweetie, don't cry. The pig's life was miserable. You're doing him a favor by eating him. He was probably counting down the days until he could put a smile on the face of a happy McDonald's customer. The moment they ran that blade across his neck was the first time he'd been happy since the day he was born. Plus, if God didn't want us to eat pigs, he wouldn't have made them taste so good.

And do you remember that time we went to the petting zoo and you saw those cute little baby chicks? Remember how you wanted to take one home so bad and we wouldn't let you? Well, the egg in your breakfast could have become one if you hadn't eaten it. So, in a way, you get to take one home now.

But, the bad news is that if you really cared about chickens you'd have ordered a chicken sandwich rather than the egg. At least then the mother hen would have felt the sweet kiss of death rather than being kept barely alive, standing around in its own filth and longing for the day that its egg production goes down enough to make it no longer worth keeping around.

Oh no, no, honey. You're not a terrible person. Chickens are actually really dumb. They have no idea what's going on. I gave them feelings they probably don't have. I was just having fun. Pigs, on the other hand, they're pretty smart. Though, I guess they're not quite smart enough or I wouldn't have just finished my second sausage biscuit.

So, to answer your question, breakfast comes from dead animals and unborn baby chickens...aren't you gonna finish that sausage?"