Compassion and Death

In this story, compassion and death is referring to bugs. I am teaching my children to act compassionately even toward bugs. They are alive for a reason, and we shouldn't just kill them because they are in the same space as us. We should even relocate the venomous ones if we are capable of doing so.

I started thinking about my compassion, or lack of compassion, towards bugs at the beginning of the week, when I found a stink-bug in the toilet, and a mosquito in my truck. I noticed the stink-bug right before I sat down, and my initial urge was to just do my business and flush the bug right down the drain. My second thought was that I could easily use toilet paper and get it out of the bowl. Luckily for the bug, I went with my second thought.

Stink-bugs are one of the little critters to which my compassion extends. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the mosquito. The get no compassion. I have a vendetta against mosquitos. They have to die!! There was a mosquito in my truck this week, and, let me tell you, hell hath no fury like me against a mosquito.

All of this has left me thinking about the things to which I offer compassion and to those that I have absolutely no tolerance.