What Does It Feel Like to be a Gosling?

I worked at home today, and did not speak to a single soul from 7.30 am to 6.30 pm.  For a break, I walked to the small field at the end of our road.  This patch of green has three medieval ponds in it, fed by a natural spring. Legend has it that they were built to breed fish, as Friday suppers for the monks at the cathedral, two miles away.

Two geese  have been sitting on a nest in turns for what seems like weeks.  They have hatched a brood of goslings, eight dusky yellow balls of fluff, each the same size, the same shape, the same swift, darting movements, the same little black beak and round, alert head.  They are never seen more than a few inches away from their parents.  When swimming, the goslings file along in a straight line, with one parent leading from the front and the other bringing up the rear.  At other times, they feed on water weed (as above), or peck energetically at the grass on dry land.

What does it feel like to be one of eight siblings, all born on the same day, identical, no names or quirky little habits to distinguish them?  They have no purpose in life other than to learn to eat and to swim, to stay close to Mum and Dad, and avoid being eaten by foxes, dogs, poachers or illegal immigrants.

Mum and Dad are model parents, teaching, protecting, and staying together.  The parents stand or sit on guard the whole time.  Neither wanders off, or seeks other entertainment, or flirts with the swan or the moorhen seen from time to time on the water.

Why have humans evolved so differently?  These goslings have no need to fear Shakespeare, Latin, French, algebra or quadratic equations.  They will not overfeed themselves to the point of mortal illness. They will not damage their livers with toxic chemical concoctions, or pounce ecstatically on a passing stranger goose, thinking that a new coupling will solve all their problems and drive away the fear of death. They simply live to feed and breed and start all over again next year.

No one will tell them they don't have to do this.  No goose has developed a contraceptive which will save all the trouble. None boasts of enjoying much more stimulating and fun activities without the responsibilities of bringing up young.  They don't have a choice.

I wonder where the human race is going next, with its control over everything but its own passions.

"On Old Age"

Here are encouraging words for us in an agist society, which punishes the non-beautiful, excludes the physically frail, the physically imperfect.  These words were written more than 2,000 years ago.
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"Great deeds are not done by strength or speed or physique: they are the products of thought, and character, and judgement.  And far from diminishing, such qualities actually increase with age."

"Some people never stop learning, however old they are."

"Age has to be fought against; its faults need vigilant resistance.  We must combat them as we should fight a disease - following a fixed regime, taking exercise in moderation, and enough food and drink to strengthen yet not enough to overburden." 

Cicero had a regime of study, which he called  "my intellectual exercise, my running-track for the brain", on a higher level than my modest reading programme.  (He was writing a treatise on Roman law, and studying Greek literature). 

At the end of the day, however, we agree on much - the need to:

"avoid drunkenness, and indigestion, and sleepless nights!": ...and to

"always find satisfaction in my reading couch..."

Thanks, Marcus Tullius Cicero, for telling me that my activities are good and useful!