Honesty. My latest discovery is that being honest with myself is the only hope of salvation. I don’t mean honesty alone guarantees happiness. But being dishonest or pretending is the surest way to fail at being a human being. Or being happy. My other discovery is that nature serves to help me eradicate the erroneous ideas I possess by its non-cooperation with my expectations.

It is difficult to know ourselves when we live in a sanitized version of reality – one where we make the rules and are the ultimate arbiter of ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’ of our behavior. That is like being the judge, jury, and executioner of our own souls. Who can then judge accurately? There must be a measure or gauge that is immune to our ability to delude ourselves. Otherwise, we may all imagine the most absurd things: That up is down, right is wrong, and 2+2=5.

Don’t feel bad about what I said: we all can believe ‘wrong’ things and delude ourselves. I don’t know where they come from exactly, but I do know if we “test” our beliefs in the world outside ourselves, we may find veracity in them. Or they may fall apart despite our best effort to enforce them. Sort of like Galileo dropping stones off the tower to see whether magnetic force would draw them to earth. We have to test them, and experience that our beliefs may sink like stones, too. Like my belief that having hens would be easy!

There seemed to be a natural order to the hen world last summer when Copper was alive. We were happy, I had an idea what I was supposed to do as the person, the assistant to the Mother Hen, Copper. Then calamity came, death. Despair, our security was lost. There was no happiness, only struggle and survival. Lately, I’ve modified my ambitions to survive a day. Happiness can wait!  

Then, I realized this useful idea: That happiness the way I defined it was impossible in this world. Happiness is like a feast, when all is in order, delights spread before you. Guests champagned! And fun-having commences with no rude interruptions or coarse remarks. It’s a holiday from the struggle and mayhem of the world outside. More like George Washington’s idea of festive and not George Constanza’s “Festivus”- the holiday set aside for the “Airing of Grievances.”

Happiness or what I had in mind as happiness was wholly dependent on things going my way. But I discovered happiness was not dependent on everything going my way. As Rat proved, everything going my way is certain not to happen that often.

Today, I experienced happiness because my hens were tough. I survived a few days, just doing minimal, maintaining my existence chores, like getting my door handle fixed for my car. Figuring out ever changing banking system issues designed to make my life easier, the claim goes. And, explaining to my mother repeatedly the difference between hens and roosters. It’s not clear why there is so much confusion on that issue.

I’ve not been overly worried about Rat sneaking some crumbs now and then. Seems like if the hens eat enough, the leftovers are up for grabs!

My hens are better off if they know how to survive, I realized, and not just living by my hand. So, occasions to free reign IN. Occasions away from full- food dish IN. Healthy snacks at routine times- Yes. Stagnation, daily grind, pathetic, helpless hens that can’t do anything like dummies NO.

I feel like I have grossly underestimated my hen’s resilience by overestimating my own importance in this relationship. Hovering hen mother, what an insult to my hen’s dignity!

Rules for Hen Mothers: Develop hen resilience!