Would you rather be a sheep?
#31 - a World War 1 adventure novel in 4 days
Hi there,
Don’t worry, your email server hasn’t broken. Your weekly dose of sunlightenment (Adi, that’s a terrible pun) is back on a wonderful Wednesday.
Over the weekend, we ventured up north to the Yorkshire Dales. A 3-night stay seemed rushed although that’s all we could afford with the GCSEs starting in under 30 days. Say no more.
It wasn’t just the perfection of gushing falls that we witnessed. In our first real staycation in 8 months, we steamed along to a railway museum, exhausted Tesco’s meal deal sandwiches and even visited my birthplace, hospital and first home! I was surprisingly relaxed, despite the countdown clock turning on for my exams.
And that’s why I’m slightly late with the blog post, Tuesday dedicated to getting back up to speed with revision and schoolwork. I hope you had a good Easter weekend as well, basking in the sunshine that we were blessed with. My highlight of the week would have to be the wonderful breakfasts at our Premier Inn. Although I may not look it, I love my food and the wide range of food on offer to kickstart the day was delicious 😋
I thought I might develop on an idea I pondered over when on our journey to the above-shown gardens. We saw a few sheep, grazing away at their expanses of field, carefree.
It got me thinking whether a life as a farmer’s sheep would be better. Here are a few reasons why I think it might:
Life without the stresses of the world - those mammals don’t know about war, inflation, school, stress, money, nothing. They have their food put onto them on a field and they can live their life without any real care in the world. Their life, as my mum put it, is ‘Eat, sleep, eat, sleep’
Security - arguably, you have a full-time carer and we don’t even need to talk about job security…because they don’t have one
But, on the flip side, they wouldn’t be able to watch Netflix, eat delicious food, go on holiday, play sports and all the other things that make life worth living. They’d even miss out on sitting exams! How unlucky.
I guess the killer blow against the argument would be that they have a shorter lifespan of 10-12 years and some are slaughtered beforehand, for our pleasure to eat lamb (thinking of it that way made me glum for a good whole minute), or have their skin peeled off. The question then becomes: to sheep or not to sheep? Temporary bliss or long-term strife mixed with joy?
Tying it all together, I think we should be grateful for being humans and getting to do the awesome things that talking, laughing, thinking that ordinary animals can’t. A diplomatic, boring response but…it’s true!
What do you think? Any pros and cons to being a sheep?
Although this may seem like a pointless exercise, I hope it has served as a reminder of how lucky we are to be human beings that are so much more advanced than animals.
Book of the week 📖
I have surprised myself by speeding through Listen to the Moon by award-winning Michael Morpurgo. It truly is an engrossing tale, taking you back to WW1, and it was a different experience to read fiction after a while - it might be the reason I finished quickly: I didn’t have to read every word. It’s a lot less information-dense.
Podcast of the week🎙️
Never thought about the categories you could fit people into and how you respond. to them. You’ll learn something new from this so have a listen
Article of the week📰
Uplifting and brave
Quote of the week💬
"The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Sheep and sapiens of all shapes and sizes, have a great week.
Adi
P.S. By the way, the dentist said things have improved. But only in an X-ray in 10 days’ time will we be able to decipher if any root damage has occurred. But I’m completely ridden of pain and returning back to the normal Adi.