If you watch birds around where you live, most just search for food and eat all day long. They need to in order to survive. The rest of their lives are spent mating, laying eggs, nesting, and feeding babies without much spectacle. They seem pretty well adjusted.
Now watch a video on birds-of-paradise. They are insane. They collect colorful rocks, make intricate nests, and come up with all kinds of crazy mating rituals. Why? Well, they can find and eat enough food to survive in their lush rainforests in just a few hours a day. So they have a whole lot of time on their hands to come up with bizarre things to do. Sound familiar, human?
Posing with a stuffed moose wearing a bandana? That's bizarre behavior!
People in this country are especially crazy. We throw balls through hoops, drive in big circles for hours, kill other animals for sport, groom our dogs, shop for the perfect dress (for our dogs), put mozzarella sticks on hamburgers, remodel our countertops, fret over the color of our houses, and endlessly watch other people do all of the above on TV.
I don’t think evolution had a plan for high-strung species that can satisfy their basic needs so quickly.
Walking your cat? Crazytime!
If you’re reading this, you probably don’t have to spend much time feeding yourself. So you and I are included in this madness. We all need to find something that we love to do, something to fret over, or maybe even obsess about. What’s most important is finding that weird little thing that’s perfect for you.
Some of us choose to climb up rocks with our spare time. Not necessarily to the top, not necessarily very high off the ground, and not necessarily using the easiest path. We fight, we scream, and we bleed our way through the moves. We get emotional when we fail. We curse these climbs, then we praise them, and tell anyone that will listen about the sick moves that we did (while they pretend to listen, waiting for their turn to spray their sick moves back at us). It’s insane. Even more insane than those colorful birds.
It’s a bit sad that the birds-of-paradise, as they toil away at their nests, may never understand how good they really have it. But we can. So next time you are anything but grateful to be climbing, even if it’s a bad day, and even if you feel particularly weak, take a second to realize that your behavior is bizarre… and this is because you’re in paradise.