Differences

Lucas A. Davidson
2 min readMay 10, 2024

Daily Meditation 802–5/10/2024

When a “boring” brown finch looks at the glorious, crimson plumage of the cardinal, does the finch feel any frustration or jealousy of him?

Certainly not.

And that’s just within our fine, feathered friends.

Do you think a snail — creeping slowly (and slimily) upon the leaves — sees an eagle soaring hundreds of feet overhead and thinks “That damn showoff. I wish I had wings…”

Certainly not.

And so it is with us humans.

We look at the rich man in his Lambo and frustratedly hate him.
We behold the slender, feminine woman with her “thigh gap” and are jealous.
We see the tall, handsome, and capable man getting attention from employers and woman and wish we were him.
We mock the Trump supporter in her MAGA hat, regardless of her station in the world draw many conclusions about her…

The animals live amongst one another not in a state of rage or jealousy but relative indifference (excluding predator-prey relationships).

They “understand” they aren’t better or worse than one another… They’re just DIFFERENT from each other.

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Lucas A. Davidson

Daily philosophical meditations on Eudaimonia. These are distillations from the forthcoming book on the topic. Comments or jobs: lucas@multistatewide.com