I wonder if birds get depressed?
I can’t help but wonder at the miracle of life.
We have just gotten a lovely pair of birds building a nest in one of our shrubs on the terrace — a pair of Red Whiskered Bulbuls — quite a common bird here in Hong Kong. They are just so lovely.
The female will keep a lookout while the male with a piece of grass in his beak disappears into the bush to add an extra bit onto the nest he has built for her. My girlfriend and I took a closer look at the nest yesterday and it’s just so perfectly formed and perfectly spherical on the inside. How does he do it? How does he know how to form it so roundly?
And how do they know where the nest is? They must have some incredible internal GPS system that tells them where things are. Their brains must be tiny — less than the size of a peanut but there’s enough going on in there that they can do these things — build a nest, keep a lookout and find the nest, not to mention rearing young and perpetuating the species. They can eat and take care of themselves and have enough brains that the species continues despite the rough-and-tumble world we live in.
And then I think about humans — and myself and how difficult I find it sometimes to continue in the world. So much to do to survive and live a better life and make money and keep your partner happy and maintain relations with your friends and family and not get into a fight with the guy that almost runs you over with his bike. All these things that — I suppose are made more challenging by the fact that we are, in some sense, burdened with intellect.
I wonder if birds get depressed? I don’t see how they could. It’s the affliction of intellect that allows us to experience depression and all the other — wonderful and not so wonderful — emotions and sensations in what it means to be human.
And then the inevitable conclusion is that there is nothing to be but grateful — for it all:
For the birds and that they are a miracle of existence.
For the depth of my own and the all the people of the Earth — that we can have such a complex experience.
And even for the negative side of our experience — depression and anger — for these feelings are the precise thing that add depth to our experience and the thing that separates us from the birds.
I’m not religious, but it’s hard not to appreciate jut how awesome it all is.
