Of Mice and Men

A little rain must fall...

We plan. We live. We try to understand.

Somewhere in this universe there is a record-keeping device that ascribes to Steinbeck’s famous quote, “the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.” Being George Milton is no solace when you lose a friend Lennie Small to your own hands. It is an act of love albeit a murderous one. Somewhere in that flow of thought, the curse of knowledge comes to mind. You know, like, George understood what would not be; the happiness of a life on the ranch. George could not bear to see Lennie sad or lynched by Curly's mob, so he killed him.

Lennie’s soul must cry out somewhere in this universe of being wronged. Ah compassion of the wrong kind heralded by the slow of mind, by the fast of claimed virtue, by the unwitting and by the rest of the herd seem to fall into their personal trap of emotional comfort. For they seem to think that the act justifies and thus soothes the emotional vein of feeling. Does it? Snuffing a life that can be helped live out some future is a good thing? Justification in the name of empathy is an emotional recoil for reason. “How can you not,” some will say, to ward off future suffering. They forget that the future changes moment to moment. Time lapse photographs of a blooming rose, a fracturing fallen pitcher of milk or the penetration of a bullet through time all change the future. The suffering never goes on. It ends sometime. It ends with time!

How can we in good conscience allow denial of care to a human in need? When did we get bestowed with the rationalization of a George Milton mind? How do we know of what is yet to come? The three days, three months, three years or three decades of a future might through the act of one life change the course of human existence, much like a certain human named Hawking has done. Was Lennie Small in need of protection from his own strength that became his weakness? Was Lennie Small’s simplemindedness nature’s cruel joke or nature’s argument for understanding? Whatever it was, he deserved a better fate! To sit in judgment of a future that is yet to be is to sit and revel in the ultimate hubris a human mind can conjure.

Time to think and comprehend what is real and what could be in the as yet fictional future.

A little rain must fall in everyone’s life. Humanity calls for giving shelter, not the gun to blow off Lennie Small’s head!