A caveman's almost enlightenment

As I awoke this morning I was struck by a sense of foreboding, as though today could be my last. I'm not sure why I felt this, and with the infinite benefit of hind-sight I know that it was little more than a feeling. Still, a notion such as this can only lead to a reflective day, and that is what I had.

It started normally, my life-partner had the fire going as I returned from my toilet trip in the nearby woods, (the one to the south today, as the wind is coming in lightly from the north), and we settled down to the usual breakfast of last night's leftovers. After that, as she began sweeping the cave out I set off for the day's hunting. This, too, went as normal. I headed due west out to the river, and climb the gentle slope to my favorite vantage point, from which I can see the great river stretching out to the mountains in the North, the edges of the forest lining the East bank, and the plains before me extending to the very horizon. From here I can see whether the bears are fishing, in which case I would wait for them to leave and try my luck in the river, and I can see when the birds rise and fall in great flocks, as though moving as one above the canopy of the forest, and this indicates larger animals roaming the woodland floor, another opportunity for yours truly to have a little hunt. And if none of these tell-tale signs are forthcoming then there is always the plains, where it usually takes little more than a couple of hours to find a beast worthy of gracing our humble dinner table.

But today something else struck me, something I've never felt before. Or perhaps just never noticed... As | stood scanning the near and far horizons for the usual signs, for the first time I noticed how beautiful the early-morning sunlight looks as it dances across the surface of the river, and how the tops of the trees in the forest, when coaxed by a breeze, sway together and seem to mimic the great lakes of the outer-lands. Further more, as I looked to the north, to where the foothills gently rise to the huge peaks of the mountains, for the first time in my existence I got a sense of just how small I really am, and maybe not the being of significance I had believed myself to be until then.

These thoughts stuck with me as I made my way down the slopes and towards the river, where I had decided would be the best day's hunting. Until now I had always considered me and my kind to be in some way important to our environment, seeing as we are the only beasts to have moved from the woodlands and into caves, we are the only ones who have mastered fire, we are the only ones who decorate our homes and we are the only ones that communicate with each other in a way other than grunts and snarls, roars and howls. But when you think about the size of those mountains, and consider the tales told in the old paintings of far away lands and exotic beasts, then it seems that maybe we are disposable to this planet. We do our best to live in harmony with our surroundings, but you just have to look in any of the rubbish sites in our villages, and compare that to the waste from the animals in the forest and on the plain, to see that we're not quite as clean and natural as we like to think we are.

And as I stood in the shallows, with my spear poised and eyes sharp, I still couldn't shake the thought that when all is said and done our time on this planet is insignificant compared with the wonder of the planet itself, and the time that it has already been here and will remain for. I had always taken it as a given that the world around me began the moment that I was born, a foolish notion I agree but I hadn't anything else to consider, indeed I had never really considered it at all. But now it seemed so obvious, as I watched the salmon jumping up the rapids as they have done since before my kind was around, and the vultures circling overhead, swooping every now and then to investigate the scraps left by the bears, as has happened for a longer time than I can even imagine.

So I caught a pair of fine salmon, and brought them back to the cave much to the delight of my partner. As she busied herself preparing the fish, I retreated to the painting wall with a strange feeling that I had something important to paint, but for the life of me I couldn't work out what it was. As I stood there looking at three generations worth of hunting tales, and images of far-away places of legend and lore, I became inexplicably frustrated, even angry, as I knew that what I wanted to paint would change the view point of my people, possibly forever. But I just didn't know what it was I wanted to portray. I painted the tops of the trees, and the mountains in the distance, and a picture of myself hunting in the river, but I simply could not find the meaning that I knew was in there, somewhere.

At this point I feel I should explain something to you. Being a well developed human being, with many many generations of evolution behind you compared with myself, my tale of my day of enlightenment may seem childish to you, and perhaps a little confusing. But what I haven't mentioned yet is that what you have been reading is my consciousness, or the voice in my head, and sadly my mind isn't yet developed enough for me to hear it. Or I just haven't learned how to listen to it. Either way, you must understand how frustrating it is, both for myself and the poor brute of whom I am an inextricable part and yet so distant from, that he has these slight glimpses of the notions I am pondering but no way of understanding what they are, or where they come from, and while I have the answers (or at least some of them) I have absolutely no way of relating them to him.