The Road


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.

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