Every animal I meet teaches me lessons.
The reason is simple. When God designed each critter, He created a special
niche in the ecological system specifically made for that particular genus
and species. Each animal, large or small, fits into God's world like a
glove fits on a hand. When I study that animal, I see the wisdom and
economy built into the animal's design.
Take spiders for
example. Have you ever seen a five-hundred pound spider? Can you imagine
the size of a web required to support a humongous arachnid? I spent time
with wild orangutans in the jungles of Borneo,
and after seeing apes that weigh hundreds of pounds, I can understand why spiders
weigh grams rather than a quarter ton.
Spiders have to spin their own webs, and it would be metabolically impossible
for a five-hundred pound spider to spin a web that could support his
weight. If you are going to have webs, you need featherweight spiders who
have just the right combination of size and weight to make their web based
existence viable.
What's true of spiders is also true for every other creature in the animal
kingdom. They are all designed for a particular niche in God's world. It's
fascinating to get up close and personal with different animals and discover
how they fit in the grand scheme of things.
Humans also need to discover how they fit in the grand scheme of things. We
are the major species that has trouble fitting in. We seem to be a square
peg in a round world.
Humans have a problem with over-population. No other species suffers from
the same affliction. When you go to wild places you won't find too many
cheetahs, owls, or crocodiles. If the balance of animal species goes out of
whack, it's usually due to human intervention. Good examples of this are
the introduction of rabbits and cane toads into Australia;
both species went wild when they landed on the shores of Oz. The genius
club thought it would be a good idea to alter the balance of nature, and
they got it wrong once again.
Over-consumption is another example. The compulsion to put food into our
mouth is out of control. We don't eat to survive. We eat to feel good, to
allay our anxieties, and to pass time. Eating is almost like smoking; it's
something we do when there's nothing else to do. How many fat lions,
tigers, and monkeys have you seen? Not many, I'll bet, because they eat
what they need to survive and nothing more. In my work as a retina surgeon,
I treated thousands of adult onset diabetics who were overweight; their over-consumption of food overwhelmed the insulin production in their
pancreas, and diabetes was the result. It's lucky we aren't spiders.
All of our webs would be sagging under the dead weight of our corpulent
bodies.
We would do well to
take a lesson from the spiders and their web-based existence. We don't need
to live in houses that cost half a million dollars, and eat until our skin
stretches, and our pancreas screams for mercy. We need to find our niche.
God designed us to be lean and to live with hearts full of love.
I've discovered my niche, and it's called "less is better". In this
particular niche, I have less things in my life, and my body weighs less as
well. I have less infrastructure, and as a result, I have fewer
worries. The only thing I don't have less of is money. You see,
when you have less things, you naturally have more money.
"Less is better" is a great way to live. If you want to travel far, you
need to travel light.
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