Boethius, The Consolation 3.6

“I would to pliant strings set forth a song

of how almighty Nature turns her guiding reins,

telling with what laws her Providence keeps safe this boundless Universe,

binding and tying each and all with cords that never shall be loosed.

The lions of Carthage,

though they bear the gorgeous bonds and trappings of captivity,

and eat the food that is given them by hand,

and though they fear their harsh master with his lash they know so well;

yet if once blood has touched their bristling jaws,

their old, their latent wills return;

with deep roaring they remember their old selves;

they loose their bands and free their necks,

and their tamer is the first torn by their cruel teeth,

and his blood is poured out by their rage and wrath.

If the bird who sings so lustily upon the high tree-top,

be caught and caged, men may minister to him with dainty care,

may give him cups of liquid honey

and feed him with all gentleness on plenteous food;

yet if he fly to the roof of his cage and see the shady trees he loves,

he spurns with his foot the food they have put before him;

the woods are all his sorrow calls for,

for the woods he sings with his sweet tones.

The bough that has been downward thrust

by force of strength to bend its top to earth,

so soon as the pressing hand is gone,

looks up again straight to the sky above.

Phoebus sinks into the western waves,

but by his unknown track he turns his car once more to his rising in the east.

All things must find their own peculiar course again,

and each rejoices in his own return.

Not one can keep the order handed down to it,

unless in some way it unites its rising to its end,

and so makes firm, immutable, its own encircling course.”

—from Book 3, Poem 2

We often think of Nature as pleasant, as gentle, as pliable. She can indeed be those things, but She is not within the power of our whims or our wills. She runs her own show.

This is as true of all the massive forces around us, as it is of all the noble forces within us. There is no standing against the force of a hurricane or an earthquake, just as there is no standing against a man’s inherent need to live well. Nature will bend, but She will never break. I can build a dam against the water, but I cannot defeat the water. I can deny who I am, but I will always need to come back to who I am.

I may believe that a lion can be tamed, but he will always remains wild. I may believe that a bird can be caged, but he will always remain free. I may believe that a tree can be pruned, but it will always rise to where it needs to be. I may believe that the state of the heavens has changed, but it always returns right to where it started.

And I may believe that I can stop being a man, just by thinking differently of myself. I may believe I can redefine happiness by wanting it in some other way. Still, it always snaps back.

Nature is indeed subtle, but She is also unconquerable. It has nothing to do with a power from without, but with the power from within, from the very identity of things, the very forms they possess. I can move a thing about from the outside, but I cannot change what it is intrinsically on the inside.

And so it is for me. I am a being of body and of instinct. I am also a being of intellect and of will. I will choose how I will live, even as some of those choices distance me from who I am, while others bring me closer to who I am.

I must choose to go with the flow of Nature, and not fight against Nature. This is not an acceptance of defeat, but the embrace of victory. I am at my best when I work in harmony with things, and never in opposition to things.

I always loved all things Godzilla as a child, and I still do as an adult, however high the cheese factor, and whether or not the King of Monsters is destroying men, or is assisting men. I learned fairly early on that he is always a benefit, because he reflects the order of Nature.

In the immortal words of Blue Oyster Cult:

History shows again and again

How nature points out the folly of man

Godzilla!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvQWBXJOgAI 

Even as a little fellow, watching the films on Saturday afternoons, I somehow understood that. Who would dare say that these films, complete with rubber suits, are not educational? They help us to understand our rightful place. 

Written in 9/2015