- So what's the purpose of life mum? -
"When you're young, you are very idealistic. Then you get older and realize, 'Shit, it's not like that.'
... The purpose of life is to be content with what you have left."
(This picture was taken on January 5, 2002) - Mum heard this joke at the bowling allyL -
Two old people in nursing homes were getting frisky. The old man said to the old woman, lets do it. The woman said ok but you have to pay me twenty bucks. The old man did and they got it on. Afterwards the old man said to the old woman, I didn't know you were a virgin, if I knew I'd have given you more money. The old woman said to the old man, I didn't know you could still get it up, if I knew I'd have taken off my panty hose.
- Glow -
"Sometimes I like to see the glow on your face other than the glow from the computer." Hubby said, after buying me a T-shirt as a surprise gift.
- Grief -
We're watching the discovery channel. Animals dealing with grief.
A mother monkey whose baby had died carried the corpse over great distance, unwilling to give it up even when the corpse had stopped resembling an infant. When a ranger buried the carcass, the mother's wailing could be heard for a long time. Other monkeys could only watch as one of their own wailed in grief.
A meerkat had confronted a jackal and was mortally wounded. Other meerkats would not leave her to die alone. One meerkat put its head on the wounded's head to comfort her. Even as meerkats traveled in packs and could not defend for themselves, they all waited for the wounded, and stayed with her until she collapsed into a crevice and died. This meerkat did not die alone.
I wonder, where do animal instincts end and human civilization begin? We think of animal instincts as involving survival, yet actions of the meerkat were obviously out of grief, loyalty, even compassion - rather than staunch survival. They jeopardized their own lives to wait for the wounded, whose life is to imminently end. Are we humans born of compassion and loyalty as part of our primitive instincts? Is loyalty, grief, and compassion - the ability to mourn loss - animal instincts after all?
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