Heroes Not Zombies

Yesterday was the annual celebration of the birth of Robert Burns. As a Scot I’m pretty familiar with some of his poems but last night the last verse of one his most famous poems suddenly struck me.

In his “To a Mouse”, the last verse reads…

Still thou are blest, compar’d wi’ me

The present only toucheth thee:

But, Och! I backward cast my e’e

On prospects drear!

An’ forward, tho’ I canna see

I guess an’ fear!

Burns wrote this poem in response to accidently destroying a mouse’s nest whilst ploughing a field. In this last verse he recognises the difference between human beings and other creatures in terms of mental processes. The mouse can only focus on the present. It deals with life in the here and now. Human beings on the other hand have the continuous tendency to think back to the past, reflecting on hardships, hurts and grievances, or to cast their minds forward into the imaginary future where they worry about all sorts of things that might befall them.

This isn’t a new idea of course, and Tolle has reinforced the concept in his “Power of Now”, but I think this is beautiful, compassionate, wise writing. He doesn’t preach. He doesn’t advise. He just states it as it is.

Our so human tendency to hang on to the past, and frighten ourselves with imaginary futures, robs us of the capacity other creatures have to be continually present in the here and now.