Duty

Daily Meditation 653–12/11/2023

There are a great many “duties” we have in our lives each day. Some of them we pay greater attention to than others.

Showing up to work on time? Probably pretty important “feeling” to us in the moment.

Ensuring our kids are clothed and fed? You better believe that absolutely feels like a duty to a vast majority of parents.

Reading the eulogy at your dad’s funeral? It’s your duty.

I feed many wild animals where I live. Each morning around sun up, I shake my tin pail of bird seed, whistle, and scatter the food around the yard and into feeders. Every day I count upwards of 30 birds. We’ve got squirrels which come up to the sound of my voice and will take peanuts from me. Deer know they can get a slice of bread out of me (or the apples from our trees). Sometimes we’ve got other critters — last year, we had a pair of rabbits.

One of those rabbits I “cleverly” named “Karlík Králík,” which in Czech would sillily mean “Charlie Rabbit.”

Well, Karlík knew what time to expect me each morning. Many days, he would eat dandelion heads and wait for me around 5am. He would rush over to me in the morning light, legs and lovely little paws wet with dew, and I’d give him a few mini marshmallows. He loved them and I loved the minutes together and the trust Karlík and I…