Animals

I took this video clip today from which the above photo is taken. While wandering around in my usual somewhat aimless fashion, I happened upon several damselflies up to no good in our garden pond. One wonders what sort of moral and ethical dilemmas damselflies have to cope with, they are apparently inclined to homosexual sex on occasions and the male holds on to the female firmly after mating so she doesn't go off and do anything untoward, like mating with another male. Anyway, they held me rapt for ages, until son1 yelled at me to get back in the house as he wanted me for something important. To tell me he was tired. He was bored. And he wanted something to eat.

So I left them to it, and when I next went back to our little pond, they were nowhere to be seen. I must watch out for the larvae, I think I saw them last year or the year before, but this year there may be more....

And I wondered what is it exactly that separates us from these beautiful damselflies? At times, as a species, we hold ourselves up, put ourselves on a pedestal, but often, like the animals we are, we are driven not by higher ideals, but by the same instincts that caused those delightful creatures to hold firm to each other.

And often, daily, in my job, I learn of those who suffer as the result of others acting on their instincts, their desires, their wants. Who have been receptacles for the other and now cannot survive with the knowledge of their past, which is deeply written on every fibre of their being.

And I don't have the answer for them.

The answer to their "Why?"

The answer to how to wipe it out.

The answer to how to live from day to day without this shadow over everything and anything that happens.

I turn to others, but they don't have answers either.

Sometimes it is all we can do, protect and wait and hope.

And offer hope to them, that one day, the knowledge might be a dagger rather than a case full of swords, a lighted match rather than an all consuming flame.

I can only hope....