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Thursday, September 16, 2010

Deep Thoughts on Mousetraps

Summer is dead.

Much like planting season this year, Autumn has decided to arrive a bit early. Signs, smells, and sounds of Autumn are abundant around hear these days. One sound especially lately....the distant **snap** of a mousetrap downstairs ridding another pest from our basement.
This morning at 6:30 the outside thermometer read "38.8"...that kind of temp sends those little mice scurrying for warmer spots, my basement being one of them.

4. I've caught 4. In 2 days.

I guess that I view those mice the same way that I view just about any other living thing...I'm more than happy to live peaceably with you in this big world, and maybe we'll be fortunate enough that our paths will cross in a meaningful way for some length of time, but if you enter my home, without permission, with selfish intent that puts the safety and/or well being of my family in jeopardy, chances are that you aren't making it out alive.

Now it's going to be right about **here** as you are reading this where you probably say to yourself something like "Wow...he's a bit of an extremist"...but, the reality is....those cute little twitchy-nose mice will eat through my stores of food, gnaw through and ruin anything soft that they can get their teeth on to build themselves a nest, leave droppings everywhere and basically contaminate everything that they scurry across. No thanks.

Part of me is reluctant to admit it, but the truth is I get giddy, and maybe even a little adrenaline rush when I find one in the trap. Last night I was headed for bed when I heard the thing snap shut and I barely touched a step as I rushed downstairs to see If I got one. I did.

It's dorky, I know, but I think that it plays to some primal instincts that humans (males, specifically) are hard-wired with: to provide and to protect.
I think that maybe finding one of those suckers in a trap tickles the same part of my brain that was tickled generations ago in some frontiersman after he shot some bear that was threatening his family. In both cases, there's the satisfaction and relief that you just protected your family against a threat. On much different scales, obviously, but the principle is the same.

Men were designed to provide for and protect their family/village/country, etc. It's in our chemical make-up. No wonder why everything is a sword or gun to a 4 year old. He's actually SUPPOSED to be thinking along those lines. Provide. Protect. Men need to be capable of performing acts of violence. For centuries and centuries every man needed to have the physical and psychological ability to hunt, trap, kill, disembowel, and dismember another living thing to provide for his family. Also, they had to be capable of, without hesitation, be able to stamp out another human life should a direct threat to the lives of their family be posed.

Today's culture is an interesting one. There's much less need to perform these violent acts to protect and provide for our families. Our protecting and providing are, for the most part, done for us. Our food is killed by someone else. We are protected by locks and walls and security systems and police....which is all great, but that hard-wiring is still there. That God-given ability to be able to perform that violent act in the name of provision and protection is still very much there, it's just that there's no longer and outlet for it.

I wonder if there would be as much crime, murder, and sexual perversion in our culture if we still had to hunt and kill things to provide and to protect our family. I wonder if much of the violence that is present in our society isn't misguided flare-ups of our primal instincts. I mean, let's face it, on some level, it's fun to be violent. It's cathartic. Don't believe me? Go down to your basement, wrap a light bulb in a towel, and smash it with a hammer...listen to it shatter and *pop* It's feels GREAT, right? Next time you are getting rid of some major appliance and it's out at the curb for the garbage truck to take away, whip a brick at it, or slam it with a bat. You can't tell me that on SOME level, maybe WAAAAYYYYYY deep down in your spirit, in a place that you don't want to admit exists, but on SOME level, it feels amazing.

I have no solution here, not even much of a point, really. I don't expect that any of us will stop shopping at Market Basket and start plinking squirrels to feed the family, but I do think that it's important to recognize that these emotions and capabilities exist in all of us, and we shouldn't rely on our society for as much and provide more for ourselves and our families. For our family:
We garden: I am providing vegetables and fruit for my family that I have planted and cultivated.
We heat our home with wood: We have a few years worth of wood that my father and I have cut and hauled. Every year at about this time, we cut and split 6 or 7 cords down to fireplace length to heat our home. If it's cold, it's up to me to work to keep our home warm. I am providing warmth and comfort for my family.
We don't watch tv: Entertainment media is annihilating entire generations of human beings and reducing them to mindless consumers. We spend tons of time with our kids and do all sorts of entertaining, educational stuff together. Our kids don't give 2 hoots about tv. I am providing positive, engaging activities for my family.

This all may read as kind of pompous and prideful, which is not my intent at all. As this blog post went along, I think I ended up writing it mostly for myself. But I think that, if I were trying to get a point across, it's that we can do much more than we think to provide for and protect our families, which, in the end, makes us feel better and more fulfilled, but more importantly, pleases the LORD.

I gotta run, I think I just heard a **snap**.

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