WILL IT EVER MAKE SENSE?

It’s good to have “Calvin and Hobbes” back in the comic pages, at least for a while. I’ve missed them.  And even if the strips are, for the most part, reruns, they never fail to leave me wanting more and reflecting deeper, just as the Gospel parables always do. A few Sundays ago Calvin and Hobbes are out walking and come upon something on the ground. Calvin bends over, looks at the object and says, “Look, a dead bird.” To which Hobbes replies, “It must’ve hit a window.”

Calvin sighs and reflects: “Once it’s too late, you appreciate what a miracle life is. You realize that nature is ruthless and our existence is very fragile, temporary and precious. But to go on with your daily affairs, you can’t really think about that…which is probably why everyone takes the world for granted and why we act so thoughtlessly. It’s very confusing. I suppose it will all make sense when we grow up.” “No doubt,” opines Hobbes as they head off to sit under a tree and contemplate.

Why is it that we seem to grasp the truth only after it hits us over the head with a hammer, a sledgehammer no less? We bump into the truth all the time as we are going from here to there but we hardly ever stop to contemplate what we have just encountered. Instead of sitting down under a tree, à la Calvin and Hobbes, we keep on trucking down the road.

To be sure, if we always ceased what we were doing every time we came upon something about which we needed to pause and reflect, we would never get much done and would certainly never get anywhere. But to always keep on trucking down the road and never take the time to stop and reflect unless the truth, on its own, stops us dead in our tracks, is asking for disaster, which is what we get.

It is only after the fact that we reflect and question. Because of that we end up being unprepared for those times when nature is at her ruthless best and runs rampant over everything in her way. It is only after a life is suddenly snatched away that we realize just how fragile and temporary and precious life truly is. It is after the fact and only after the fact that we do. After the fact is always too late.

The sad part is that parables and comic strips and even words of reflection only cause us to pause for but a moment. We nod our heads in agreement and assert that we have to do something about this or that. But then, as Calvin observes, we get on with our daily affairs and consign the lesson of the parable to somewhere in the recesses of our minds promising ourselves that we will get back to it when we have time, which we hardly ever do, of course, until it is, once again, too late.

This life and this world being what they are, we will never make total sense out of it all. That is a given. But we will continue to do senseless things to ourselves, to one another and even to nature itself if we do not take time to contemplate what has happened, the lessons we might learn, and what we must do to prevent what has happened from happening again.              WJP