To Love, Coexist, or Destroy? That Is The Question

When I was 16, I wrote a lot of poetry. It was a great outlet for uncontrollable intense emotion that I didn't understand how to channel constructively. In fact, I composed an entire book of poetry designed in the same structure as Dante’s Inferno, but I never published it. Maybe someday.

One of the poems I wrote at that age was describing the emotional experience of witnessing a spider in my living space, and rather than resorting to the reflex of force and destruction, settling in the state of observation.

This was the first time I observed conscious life (in the form of intrusive insects) rather than destroying it.

I wrestled with the desire to destroy it out of unfounded fear, and ultimately succumbed to allowing it to live and accepting the lesson it joined my experience to teach me. To observe and respond, rather than react.

Today this is still a very salient point, as I have a “hands off” policy with all conscious life. I strive to live and let live.

A few months ago I had a mouse in my house. After I spent 2 months trying to humanely trap him/her and him/her was finally released outside, I realized there were 2 more mice.

A long and trying test in patience in experimenting with different humane trapping methods that didn’t work.

Eventually I got them both outside alive, trapping them in 2 liter bottles with dog food in my pantry.

Then, I stored the 2 liter DIY trap in my utility closet for future use.

Tragically a month later I found another mouse dead in the DIY bottle trap. It seems it got in, but couldn’t get out. I’m just glad I got to see the others scatter away and find a new home.

I did everything I could to safely remove the mouse family from my home. At one point I was so frustrated with them eating my fruit that I bought some glue mouse traps, though luckily I never used them. If you don’t know already, glue mouse traps cause the mouse to get stuck, starve/dehydrate to death, and die an incredibly painful death compromised of constant suffering. Would you like to die this way?

Fast forward to today. This beautiful spider lives under the toilet in one of my bathrooms. I see her come out and hang from her web every night, and disappear during the day. She eats some of the more annoying bugs I have to deal with in the jungle. She has no intention of intruding on my life. She just wants to live in her home, under the toilet, and do spider stuff.

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I have the choice of ending her life and thinking nothing of it, coexisting with her, or trapping her and releasing her outside.

Usually I’m a trap and release kind of guy, but this time I have been taking the next step forward to coexisting. After all, my home is in her jungle.

Why would the value of any conscious life supersede the value of any other? Why would I have the right to exert force on any other conscious life, human, mouse or spider? How is it any different for me to "forcefully relocate" this spider, than it is for a government to forcefully relocate you because of "imminent domain," which is clearly a form of aggression?

Self-awareness? Ability to feel pain? Size? Natural superiority?

All bullshit justification.

We are all One. As Reuben Langdon says in Episode #41 of @belair podcast simply ask yourself, does what I'm doing contribute to separation, or to unity?