Why this blog is called"The Second Mouse's Guide to Life"
Let me explain...I'm quite fond of the saying, "The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." I'm not quite sure where I heard it and for a while there I even think I was taking the credit for making it up, but in my age'd wisdom I have conceded that even I am not as sage enough to have said that for the first time. I have taken that saying to heart as a world view and try to live by it as best I can. When I was a counselor at boy scout camp, during our morning flag ritual/daily address often times members of the staff would cheerfully greet the campers with amusing, if cryptic, sayings, our take, if you will, on wacky boy scout philosophy. Part of our motive was to portray ourselves as offbeat and slightly deranged from living at scout camp all those weeks, but I think somewhere deep down we believed we were charged with imparting a little wisdom, albeit fucking up, to those young campers. My absolute favorite was my good buddy Howard's admonition, "As you ramble on in life, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole." and of course mine, every week, was the same, "The early bird my get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." Usually confused looks ensued. Lets consider the imagery for a second here. I think immediately people are struck with the dichotomy of the two images: the cheery early bird, out hunting for the day, lilts onto a patch of green grass and pokes around to find a fat lazy worm and dispatches it to the hereafter juxtaposed against the grim image of a poor dead mouse gruesomely hacked in half by a trap and while his savagely opportunistic kindred eats the cheese that the first mouse gave his life for. A pretty grim outlook on things. Am I suggesting that we reap each other's misfortune? Is the only way to survive simple exploitation of another? Are we doomed to cannibalize ourselves as we race for resources to satisfy our incessant hunger on this pointless journey we call life? Well...kind of. See I think of it as thus...We each are here to live life as best we can. Each of us owes nothing to our brother, and owes it to ourselves to spend our short time here as productively and well spent as possible. And we, by ourselves, are the only judge of that value, and judgment day is everyday of our lives. In the end, we are responsible only for ourselves and those who shirk that responsibility only have themselves to blame. Now, back to the mouse. The reason I like this saying so much is not only the gruesome connotation (which is fucking awesome), but because it says something about learning. One might simply suppose at first take, that the opportunistic second mouse merely came upon his unfortunate brother (no pun intended *see picture*) and was taking advantage of the situation. BUT consider the possibility that this mouse might not have simply fallen on good luck, but created this situation by learning. By second guessing the mouse trap, by recognizing the danger, by understanding the motive of humans, by knowing the dupability of his brethren, by knowing that not only does A lead to B but will also lead to C (as in cheese), by watching and learning, by not needing to make every mistake itself in order to learn, the second mouse gets the cheese. Might I suggest that the second mouse laid in wait for the first mouse, and then took the cheese when he knew it was safe to do so. Doing so inherently rejects typical "socialized behavior" which of course would have dictated that the mouse morn for his fallen comrade instead of eating said cheese. Can this be a world view? I think so. I think we need to learn from others mistakes. Its not necessary to make EVERY mistake ourselves. If we can see that some things lead to others logically, why should we expect our lives to be different? How many HBO documentaries have you watched where some guy says something like, "I had no idea that blowing dudes for heroin and coke was going to ruin my life, I'd seen what it had done to my friends but I guess I needed to be taught myself." FIRST MOUSE! GET IN THE TRAP! YOU'RE BREATHING MY AIR! See, life doesn't have to be random, we don't have to be at the mercy of change and luck. We can figure stuff out and create our own environment. I'm not suggesting that its possible to orchestrate every possible occurrence of good fortune ever, but certainly we can keep ourselves out of the fire most of the time. Life is going to give us enough misery, no need to go creating it ourselves. We need to lift our heads out of the sand every now and then and see what's really going on, to search ourselves for our true value and live according to that. Step out of our social muck and make a few self important decisions about what we value, everyone else be damned. Change our lives to avoid that misery that we have the power to avoid and not blame fate or providence for things that we are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves. To see where others are headed and to accept that we are not omnipotent but sometimes we can be pretty darn intuitive if only we listen to ourselves and make judgments that preserve our own well being. To accept that sometimes we may feel sorry for those who royally fucked up around us, but know that the world is a giant mouse trap and someone had to be first. How can we properly respect the unfortunate first mouse? By not repeating his mistake. And getting the cheese. I named my journal "The Second Mouse's Guide to Life," not because I believe anyone can read my tripe and gain anything from it, and I wasn't trying to write the definitive text on my world view, but because I'd wanted to pay homage to the little saying that meant so much to me over the years. Anyone willing to inquire about the odd name would get a few minutes of good conversation from me, and possibly a cocktail. A friend forwarded me the picture above years after I'd been spouting all this stuff and I got a kick out of it. Admittedly, it's a rather cruel (although starkly relevant) depiction of said maxim, but the essence of the matter is still true to what I'm talking about.
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