Conscience

Occasionally I wonder if I do in fact have a conscience. That little part of the brain that is supposed to tell you what is right and wrong, sometimes I wonder if mine still works. I have no problem telling a little white lie to get out of a sticky situation, spare a loved one's feelings or impress someone I hardly know. Yeah, I was an extra in The Man Without A Face. Well, actually my buddy Aaron couldn't get the day off from work that day, so I was ALMOST an extra in The Man Without a Face - minor detail. Then inevitably something will happen to reassure me that I indeed do have a working conscience.

I have been religiously walking every day to get some sort of regular exercise. Actually, I enjoy it - I don't enjoy running, but walking I like. I walk through my little corner of the world, which is basically suburbia. I do walk past one little stream and from time to time I encounter some kind of woodland creature on my walk. It is small and brown and furry but I can never get close enough to really tell if it is a groundhog or beaver or what. I have seen as many as two or three of these little guys out and about, so there must be a whole clan of them.

Well, today I was walking along and I saw one of my little buddies lying in the road. Dammit - he had been hit by a car. And even though I had nothing to do with it I just felt so bad that it happened. That was some other groundhog's brother or mother or husband or friend. An innocent life cut short simply because some human in a car was in a hurry. It just didn't seem right. The other groundhogs don't know what happened, they just know that daddy or mommy didn't come home from THEIR walk today.