The Other
My brain is an untidy place. Unlike some, who can quote long passages from books or complete poems, I mostly remember the sense of the thing. I can never say, so and so, writing in such and such, said this, and then offer up the quote. Sometimes I can’t even remember who said something. The books I’ve read are just a list and the information in them, the stories and observations, are accreted to my brain in bits and pieces as though it were a patchwork quilt.
A case in point, was an observation I shared last night in conversation with friends about a sign of civilization. A skeleton was discovered. There was a healed broken femur. This showed compassion because animals with broken legs usually go off and die, unable to hunt. The skelton's friends, on the other hand, tended the wound, hunted, shared food, and helped the person get well. Empathy. Civilization.
This morning, I had to look it up to see if my memory was good. It was. Apparently, Margaret Mead made this observation, although I don’t know where I would have read about it. It was just there. The sense of the thing. The feeling that caring about others was important. And maybe it came from the morning after Christmas when my father took me, a child of four or five, to bring a Christmas present to another child that Santa mysteriously left at our house. A small thing, but a thing done for the other, to show me that life wasn’t always just about me.