I will always have this problem with sheep – they are sheep. They all do what the others do, moving like waves, or flocks of birds, or clouds of gnats. They cannot think for themselves and are defined by what outside things wish them to do – people, grass, or dogs. Another way of putting it is this. You can be the sheep or you can be the dog. Donkeys are gloriously independent free-thinkers next to sheep. My donkeys broke into the barn yesterday, nosing open the door, lifting the bars on two doors, taking the lids off of two cans, and gorging for hours on feed and donkey cookies. We yelled at them and chased them out of the barn. This morning, they were trying again.

You can be the diner or the meal,  you can eat lunch or be lunch. I am a Darwinian and I see the laws of nature at work every day, for animals, for humans. Unlike the sheep – or dogs –  we humans have a consciousness about ourselves. We have choices. We have consciences. We know our time on the earth is finite and we know not to waste our lives. What a shame to live like sheep with such awareness.

I would rather be Red than the sheep Red moves around. To me, people who see themselves as “left” or “right” are sheep of the mind. They have no ability to think independently, only to follow the angry scripts written for them by others. No longer able to listen, they can only stew in their own juices, perpetually victimized by one side or the other. People who believe that their health can only be defined by forces outside of themselves remind me of sheep, flocking to tests, pills, other people’s definitions (my doctor is coming to visit me on Sunday and I will always love him for asking me if I loved anything about my life, and when I told him I loved everything about my life, he smiled and leaned back and said, “well, you are healthy”), of what health is.

People who give up on love and hope and change behave like sheep as well. They are told they need so many things to live their lives, and are so fearful of not having them that they become slaves like sheep – they live as they are told. This not for me, I don’t want to be one of T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men. Life is not simple or easy for any of us. When I wrote about our new home yesterday, several people wrote that I have a perfect life, that they wanted my life. Wanting someone else’s life – especially someone you don’t even know – is not the path to happiness or fulfillment. It is the definition of hollowness. There are plenty of farms for sale in the work (including mine) and they are cheap. If this is the life you choose, go get it.

I know it is something of a gamble to buy a second farm before having the first. But my banker says it was no sweat for them. The farm is in great shape and very cheaply priced. Someone will buy it. And if the banker says that, I can go with it. I think a sheep would pass up the new house. Stay with the flock.

If I were giving any advice to my daughter (she hasn’t asked for any in ten years or so), it would be this.

You can either eat lunch or be lunch. Eat lunch.