How a Dead Mouse Stopped me From Complaining for Almost a Whole Day

I met a lady today who's smile didn't agree with the rest of her face. She was taking admission fees at the entrance of a national park, and maybe she had had just about as much as she could take from the endless parade of tourists and their questions so that the plastic smile was all she could authentically manage. Or maybe it was just too darn hot. Or perhaps that was her real authentic smile. Or maybe I was just crabby and judgemental because the day before, I had another one of those "professional warmth" encounters at the Apple store. I had had just about as much as I could take from the world and was projecting my BS (read 'belief system') onto the lady in the ticket booth.

On the way into the park, I heard the *ding* from my smartphone letting me know that I had an email. To my surprise, my energy surged when I considered the possibilities of answering the invitation I had just received from the Apple Store to let them know what my experience of shopping there had been like. I was pouring out words onto the reply email, in my mind, to the point where I stopped noticing the unique, spectacular, and shimmering desert landscape I was driving through. I was going to let them know, in the most polite yet pointed way, that I did not enjoy my experience. I started working out the exact phrases I would use to disguise my criticism in reasonable, non-violent communication language so that I would come out being right while being thoughtful and non-violent.

Nearly Interrupted

My travel companion parked the car where we were going to trek three miles into the 104-degree desert heat and back for an adventure. The stopping of the engine almost interrupted the composition of the email in my head. Yet I was able to stick to my thinking: there was another valid point I needed to make. I opened the door, and as I reached my foot to the desert dust, I noticed right there a dead desert mouse that must have recently expired, either from the heat, or from natural causes, or human causes.

I stopped complaining in my head from that moment, almost for the whole day because there before me in the dust was a beautiful thing, with a bushy little tail at its final this-world destination. It occurred to me how brief some encounters are and that I might be the only witness to this poignant moment, the witness who nearly missed the moment because he was composing a complaint email; because he didn't like the way the clerk spoke to him.

In the desert, as we walked, now with my mind returned to the good fortune of being alive, and the ability to walk, and to see, and with so much privilege, and with more than a day, or a week, or a month, to call my life-span, I started to see the desert. 

I noticed a spring, not more than a few inches across, creating a microbiological world of impossibly fast-moving insects. I noticed bees too. Bees, deep in the dry landscape, were buzzing around tiny damp spots in what seemed a joyful way to me. I imagined how happy I, too, would be to find water in that place on such a day as this.

Fragile and Beautiful

In a dry river bed, a tree not from this area—probably carried by some flash flood—was wedged in between desert rocks. It looked out of place. It, like the mouse, had reached its end with almost no one to notice. I spotted an insect and marveled at its good-or-bad fortune for having a rear side that looked like a raspberry. It was the only thing of that startling color in the entire desert that I could see, and it moved with enough erratic moves to avoid whatever considered it to be food. A snake—wrapped around a dry, recently burned bush, waited patiently for the sun to pass behind the mountain for some relief from the heat, so that it could get to where it was going. And most amazingly, a hummingbird. Several. In the desert. With not a blossom or a sprinkler or a hanging nectar feeder for three miles.

No, there was something equally amazing, if not more amazing than hummingbirds. At a curve in the dry river bed, there was a pond, the result of a slow trickle from some underground source, over time accumulating enough water to be about a foot deep. It was an invitation for the desert to pack as much life as possible into that spot. In the pond, at the bottom, holding quite still were two bugs about the size of scarabs. Now and then, one would quickly shoot to the surface of the murky water and grab some air and rush back to who I assume was the mate. Even if they were just friends, I marveled about how it could be that deep in the thirsting desert in a here-today-gone-tomorrow pool, these two could find each other and do what they need to do to express their life urgings.

It seemed so fragile and so beautiful. 

I nearly missed all of it. 

I wonder how much I miss when I'm impatient, entitled, or myopic.

Today, I will pause more frequently to notice. 

Today, I will give my attention to that which has heart and meaning.

Rev. Edward Viljoen, DD (Hon.)

Spiritual Leader

Photo by Jaunt and Joy on Unsplash