A Dead Beaver and Some Inquisitive Thoughts

I spent Friday night and Saturday night at a friend’s house. The friend? It doesn’t matter who. It was a great time, though. Today, I had to come back to the dorm for study hall. I wasn’t even supposed to leave this weekend, but the duty teacher was cool enough to allow me to get away from this hell hole for a little bit of peace. My friend’s sister generously offered to drive me back to campus, because sadly enough, I do not have a car just yet. Oh well. On the way back, we listened to the Beatles and sung every word to every song. I love the Beatles so much. The last song we listened to was “Love Me Do,” which happens to be one of my all time favourites. Right as we got to the chorus, we drove over the railroad track – the one by the Sara Lee factory. I was so into the song that nothing could distract me. At least, that’s how it usually would have been. But just as I looked to my left, over the steering wheel, I saw…a dead beaver.

“Where did that come from??” My friend’s sister looked in the direction which my left index finger so fervidly pointed. When she finally set her eyes on the road kill, she came to an immediate stop. “What the hell is a beaver doing over here?” she asked. Obviously, we couldn’t run over and pick it up, but we were so fascinated in the little animal. Where did it come from? Why have I never seen a live beaver around here? I wonder if someone dropped it there to make it seem like there were beavers around. Who would go through that trouble, though? That’d be dumb. Maybe….maybe it’s not really a beaver! Maybe it’s an alien. Yeah. Wait, that sounds kind of dumb too. What if it walked all the way from some clan of beavers? What were its intentions? Did it know where it was headed? Probably not. Better yet, what was its motivation? Perhaps it was some anxt-driven teenager who just needed some time away from his (or her) parents. Poor thing. Karma is a bitch. What if he (or she) was trying to prove a point to his (or her) parents? He…yeah, let’s just call it a ‘he.’ He probably didn’t plan on staying gone too long; just long enough to scare the ‘rents.

What if that’s what really happened? That’s so unfair. I used to want to run away from home so badly. What if I had? What if I had and I had gotten run over by some careless driver? That wouldn’t have proven much of anything. I’m so glad I never ran away. That’s such a terrible way to die – getting hit by a car and left for scavengers. In a few days, bugs, birds and some crazy rodents will have stripped him of his flesh and left his intestines to decay. No one, except maybe I, will remember him. Even if he had died of old age, no human would remember him. It’s just an animal, right? Wrong! Well, maybe that is right. When I die, a few people will mourn, maybe some old high school friends will send my family some flowers, but will anyone really care after all is said and done? I highly doubt it. We, as humans, are given maybe 70 or 75 years on Earth now-a-days. Some of the lucky ones get more, and those who are not so lucky get fewer. Say I die when I’m 80. That gives me until the year 2073. That amount of time will fly with respect to eternity. And when I finally do die, then what? My family and friends will hold a funeral, people will be sad for a little while, et cetera, et cetera. Give or take a hundred years afterward, and no one will remember who Aliya Ilsa Smith was. That name probably won’t be of much importance to anyone by 2173.

What’s the point of my existence? What use am I to the rest of the world if my body will only eventually give out on me and force me to die? And in the end, if my existence is worthless, what happens after death? What will happen to my conscience? It cannot possibly die, because it was never “alive.” Then, if you think about it, I can never technically die, either. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, so when my body deteriorates along with the coffin in which it shall lie in about 64 years, that matter will be reincarnated. And this has nothing to do with beliefs; that’s strictly science. The circle of life, if you will. The matter which makes up my body today could have been that of a tree centuries prior to my birth. My conscience, though, is a different story. What is it? What is a conscience? It works my brain, which controls the rest of my body, but what runs my conscience? Damn, this is confusing. Aside from that endless circle of disorientation and onto its servants. What about emotions? Why do they change so often? Why do they exist at all? What is the point? This sounds so depressing, but in reality, it’s just a whole lot of ranting on nothing too special. All I want is for something to answer these questions. I guess when it all comes down to it, life is a huge, dense ball of confusion and I’ll never have the answers to any of my relatively deep questions. I’m going to die soon anyway, right? For now, I just want to know what the hell is up with that beaver.