Almost 7 years ago I visited the Waitomo Caves in
New Zealand for the first time. It’s a
lovely cave and half way through you get into a boat and sail through the pitch
black, but above you are glow‑worms. They are quite something to see. Glow‑worms are the larvae and they glow to
attract insects that get captured in their sticky threads and become glow‑worm
food. Once the glow‑worms mature, they
become flies without mouths their purpose is to mate and make more glow‑worms. This is the most depressing thing I have ever
heard. Born – Eat – Mate – Reproduce - Starve
to death. How pointless. Then I started to think, well I suppose this
is what all life is about really and this sent me to a dark place.
I recently watched a movie called “The Road”
starring Viggo Mortensen, adapted from a novel by Cormac McCarthy. Its set after some undisclosed disaster has happened
to the Earth and is about the Man and his son, the Boy. They are travelling south to the coast where
they hope it will be warmer, but since all animal and plant life have died out
and even the trees are dying, they are starving. Many families have committed suicide, others
have turned to cannibalism. The main
dangers are starvation, exposure, or being captured by a gang and eaten. I haven’t read the book but I did read that
it is more graphic and bleak than the movie.
In this movie human life has been reduced to trying to
survive in a dying world. There is not
much eating, mating or reproducing going on, it’s just straight to starve to
death.
For 2 days now my mind has been busy contemplating these
things. I’ve dreamt about it.
Today I remembered Viktor Frankl. He wrote “Man's Search for
Meaning” based on his experiences as a Jewish slave labourer in a Nazi
concentration camp. He believes that
meaning can be found everywhere, even in extreme suffering.
Perhaps then the life of a glow‑worm is a happy and
purposeful one, controlling the insect population and giving New Zealand
tourists something to wonder at. And
perhaps the love between a father and son is reason enough to not just survive
but to seek out a better existence despite the unimaginable dangers and to
cling on to their humanity.
