When Nature Calls...

Being God´s creatures, we are all part of the animal kingdom and sooner or later we react to nature when it calls. Just as the moon affects the tides, so does nature affect our senses. As if it wasn´t hard enough controlling our lives without letting our hearts get in the way, mother nature also decides to put in a twist just to keep up the drama! At 21 years of age, fresh into the adult world, the last thing that should enter a young carreer woman´s mind is children! Studies, furthering one´s carreer, acquiring an apartment or car should be on top of the priority list and yet somehow there will be a day where Johnson & Johnson baby cologne will avert this young woman´s attention away from the latest perfumes. Fortunately just as the moon phases pass, so too do these phases of nature. We realise that we were possessed by mother nature´s magic spell and manage to repossess control of our senses.

Not having any children of my own, I´m always curious to hear about other people´s experiences... skipping the part where you scream and pass out from the pain of pushing something the size of a rugby ball through a golf ball´s hole, tearing your insides apart... I noticed an interesting fact that all these women unconsciously shared a common ritual before their child was born. As it so happens, if you ask any of these women what they were doing the day their child was born the answer you will most likely to get is that they had been cleaning. Each of them remember cleaning and disinfecting their whole house the day they gave birth to their child, one even managed the energy to bake a chocolate cake! Reading up on this phenomenon, I found it that it is common for females to want to disinfect their habitat for the arrival of their new offspring. I distinctly remember the on the two times that Dyna (our toypom) had puppies, she scratched and scratched at her bed until you could swear she had vacuumed her bed in slow motion. Holding this true to other species, it doesn´t differentiate us much from the animal kingdom.

If we were to label this call of nature, the closest word we could come up with would be instinct. Sitting down to meditate I realised that instinct, or this so called "call of nature" dominated more of our lives than we realise. Even men go through a stage where their priorities change from fast cars and easy women to a wife and a good home. Suddenly mini skirts don´t catch their attention as much as sweet smile. If it were animals that we were studying, the environmentalist will probably explain to you that a male will search to mate with a female capable of having strong children and looking after them. Which means even your average player will think about settling down, not because he wants to but that it´s in his nature to do so and when such day comes he will search rather for the type of specimen that he can create a home with rather than show off.

The more I thought about the subject, the more I wanted to explore it. I started to study the reactions I saw around me to see how much of them were influenced by mother nature. Starting with the mirror, I detected a certain possessiveness in myself when it comes to my brother, I lost count of the times that I defended him when he couldn´t stand up for himself. Instinct makes one stand up for the weak especially when it comes to those of the same blood. The call of nature makes you run when you´re scared, attack when you´re threatened and adapt when your surroundings change. I´ve seen carreer women dream of marriages and babies between meetings and phonecalls. I´ve seen men in their late twenties start to stress when they realise that they haven´t begun to construct their families yet. Instinct calls on us to protect, provide and nurture our families and so the circle of life is complete. What makes you think that you´re not a part of it?

Taking all of the above into consideration, one would think that we were no different from any of the other animal species. Once again we look at what makes us different... the power of choice. No matter what your instinct is, you have the power to decide what do with it. We have the sole responsibility for our own happiness, only you can know what makes you happy. What makes us different from animals is that when nature calls, we chose what to answer back.