I was stroking my skinny little cat today as she flipped and rolled around, purring vehemently and adoring the violent love which I give her (the great thing about raising a cat from a kitten is that you get to train them to believe in whatever form of petting you give them. I pet her roughly, scratching her and rolling her around and she loves it. My big cat, though, would kill me if I tried that sort of thing) as I sat down at my desk in my basement. I was watching Strangers on a Train and reading White Fang and generally just enjoying life when I stumbled upon a beautiful chapter that describes the first time the wolf cub (who I can only assume will one day be White Fang) leaves the den in which he has been raised. I found myself book marking nearly every page (this is how I mark things when I'm reading a book on my phone, since I can't underline a particular section like I do when reading a hard copy book) so I decided it would just be easier to type it all up for myself. It's a wonderful analogy for adolescence, and reminded me of scenes from my own life, which my newly-daddy-directed thought process immediately reformatted into a sense of wonder and anticipation in awe of the forthcoming privilege of watching my own child grow up. I'll reproduce all the relevant parts I loved here:
"But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which was growth. Instinct and the law demanded obedience. But growth demanded disobedience...Growth is life, and life is forever destined to make for light. So there was no damming up the tide of life that was rising in him...In the end, one day, fear and obedience were swept away by the rush of life...It was bewildering...Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on...A great fear came upon him. This was more of the terrible unknown. He crouched down on the lip of the cave and gazed out on the world. He was very much afraid. Because it was unknown, it was hostile to him...Nothing happened. He continued to gaze, and in his interest he forgot to snarl. Also, he forgot to be afraid...Now the grey cub had lived all his days on a level floor. He had never experienced the hurt of a fall. He did not know what a fall was. So he stepped boldly out upon the air...The cub had broken through the wall of the world, the unknown had let go its hold of him, and here he was without hurt...He traveled very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things...Sometimes he overstepped and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he understepped stubbed his feet...But with every mishap he was learning...This was living, though he did not know it. He was realizing his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made...He was justifying his existence, that which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do...With every rock he struck, he yelped. His progress was a series of yelps, from which might have been adduced the number of rocks he encountered... Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust of appearances. He would have to learn the reality of a thing before he could put his faith into it...He had recollected that there was such a thing in the world as his mother. And then there came to him a feeling that he wanted her more than all the rest of the things in the world."
- White Fang, Part Two. Chapter Four. "The Wall of the World." Jack London
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