I found a mole today, trapped in the stairwell as I came in to the office. This is a recessed stairwell and the poor guy probably lost his bearings in the bright lights of the garage, tumbled over the wall, and was trapped.
As anyone who knows me will know -- I can't let him die. Animals do not die on my watch, whether they're annoying or pests or cute. It doesn't matter. If I can help, I do.
So I got a mail bin and managed to trap the poor guy into it. Then I hefted it up over the wall and dumped him out. Unfortunately, it's a landscaped area and I dumped him into the rocks, but he was scrabbling for the sides of the bins and I was worried he'd drop. He burrowed under the rocks for a long time then I finally saw dirt flying upward. He'd found the ground.
I came back later and found a nice molehill, indicating he'd gone deep. I HOPE he managed to find his way out to the Real Mole World (he'll have to dig under some concrete to get there, but I hope he finds his way).
This made me think: why the hell was I worried about a mole at 5:00 in the morning? And worry I did, until I went back at 5:40 and found that molehill.
It's really simple. You have to do the right thing in life.
Sometimes it ain't the simple thing, sometimes it's a pain, sometimes it's inconvenient (like finding a plastic mail bin at 5:00 in the morning in an empty office building). But you do what you think is the right thing.
If only Wall Street, Washington, and the State Capitol did that. I'm not saying they're all shamelessly opportunistic, but if only a few people in power had paused and said, "What's the right thing?" maybe ...
This leads me to the elections coming up. I don't love either candidate, but I don't think I have to love them. I have to respect the person I vote for, I have to believe he'll do the right thing. All I have to go on is his track record during the election campaign. I can't look at his voting record in the Senate (because that was predicated on past events). I have to look at what I feel is his character, right now. How did he run his campaign? How did he act in the current crisis? Will he do unpleasant or unpopular things in the future because they're the Right Thing? Or will he bow to lobbyists and his party to do something else that's more convenient?
Our country faces really, really tough choices in the future. We're going to have to change to survive. We can't be the America we used to be -- we have to remake ourselves to face a world that's changing so quickly ... I have to vote for the person who can help us make that change.
I have to read about them, consider the points and not vote for a party or a personality. I've got to do what I think is the Right Thing. I wish more people made election choices based on that instead of party affliation or because of fear (fear of the other guy or fear of the future). But that's the other people. For me, I've got to do what I think is the Right Thing, right now, and pray it's not too late.
That mole made me realize it. I can't dig a hole and go inside and hope it all gets better. Maybe somebody will come along and bail us out with a big mail bin. It's going to take something as drastic as that to upend our world and get us going again, just like I did for that mole. It scared the poop out of him while I was corralling him (and chasing him around that stairwell), but it's going to be okay.
Let's hope we can say the same in a year or so.
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