Was Ra kidding when he said dogs were vegetables?

[Sacred Fool]

 
For a little while last summer I was hanging out on our local Sacred Mountain, not far below the tree line.  I was walking by an old Red Spruce when I swear it put this thought in my head: "It must be difficult to take a human incarnation."

I was rather surprised by the introduced thought.  Then I looked around at the fairly harsh, yet peaceful environment where the soil was poor, the winds could be crazy strong, the slope was steep, fires could be fierce and there were fallen dead spruce all over the place, as well as many young ones coming up.  I looked at that, then I looked off the mountain down to the nearby town, just off the Interstate, and thought about our human environment.  

Finally, I nodded my head and thought, "Yes, it is difficult living in a human body in a human society."  It is a complex endeavour and full of a different kind of struggle, to be sure.  Up there the trees in some sense struggle with nature, whereas we tend to struggle against it, which, I would say, makes for a more stressful incarnation.