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If I was an Animal, I'd Suspect I'd Be a Sloth ...

I hope not, but sadly, some of my habits, particularly my habit of sitting around doing nothing, physically, would look slothful, to others, at least ...

By Carolyn CordonPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
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If I was an Animal, I'd Suspect I'd Be a Sloth ...
Photo by Hitoshi Namura on Unsplash

Oops, that's not a sloth, that little creature. I'm not sure what it is, but it isn't a sloth. This little creature has nimble looking fingers and hands, and inquisitive eyes. It's sitting up in a tree, as sloths usually are too, but this creature lookes as though it gets stuff done! And by the way, did you realise the word slothful refers to the sloth, or was it the other way around? The word apparently was first used in the 15th century ...

(I don't know about the actual truth of that, because the word 'slothful' is in the Bible ... Somebody is playing tricks with words, on this one. And of course you can't believe everything you read on the internet, because there is a lot of stuff there, and not all of it is checked for the facts being real, rather than just ideas or even plain lies ...)

Anyway, that creature is not a sloth, that is the truth It may be what? A marmoset, perhaps ... Anyway, maybe if I was an animal I'd like to be this one, whatever it is ... It looks agile, and nimble and the expression on its face looks like it is thinking, big thoughts.

This is what I do - the times when I may appear slothful, I may well be thinking about things. What my next step will be, what I have to get done for the day, what I will write next, do next, eat next, write next (I know I've already said that, but that's what I think about a lot!), drink next, and do next.

I did some looking on the internet, and discovered sloths sleep about 15 hours a day. What a lovely thing that might be, to be able to do that, at least every now, and then, hey? Being in bed, tucked warm and safe, how beautiful might that be?!

But I'm not a sloth, I'm a human and I have lots of things to do. So 15 hours of sleep may be a thing I dream of having, when I'm actually getting my more usual 9 and a half hours of sleep, but it is only a dream. Dreams are good things to have, for sure, but dreams of getting more sleep seems an incongruous thing, and not a useful thing.

But our dreams are only a mish mash of things percolating in our brains at night, and not anything stable to set our lives on. This is what I believe anyway, although I have in the past toyed with the idea of my dreams having meaning, which is something quite a few people believe in. But many people think many things are true, that look like hogwash to me, so I don't go anywhere near them.

Our lives are made up of the things we do, think, believe, and do, and our dreams are merely images and stories our minds make up when we sleep. But when I write 'merely' am I wrong in that? The dreams we have using those images are the result of our brains thinking further on such matters, and I have sometimes woken up in the morning, with the answer to a problem I'd been thinking about the day before.

So based on that, I'm prepared to believe that dreaming might be significant thing to do, but not in a foretelling of future actions to occur kind of way, ie, telling the future. It's more a kind of the unconscious mind working through things that have happened and working out the best way to go. I can believe in that, I suspect that has happened for me in the past.

Anyway, back to where I began

I've done some looking around on Google, and suspect the creature in the image above is an owl monkey, which is a small monkey that lives in Central America. Apparently they are the only monkey that is awake at night, and sleeps through the day. Sloths do that too, to some extent, but obviously they sleep through some daytime hours as well, if they sleep for 15 hours ... This is all very interesting, looking at the habits of different animals.

If I was an animal though, I suspect being a well cared for dog would be a grand thing to be. Looking at my dog, Missy, she sleeps more than a sloth does! But she's a hound, and when she runs, she really runs, zooming around the backyard at times, and carrying on like a hound much younger than her 13 years. As I type, she's on her sofa again, as she often is, and snoozing, again. Lucky Missy, I'd love to have her life! She gets fed good quality food, plus snacks, she gets some exercise to stay healthy, and she can snooze whenever she want, in airconditioned comfort, most of the time, a fine life.

I've moved on from my title statement, but isn't that the way of things sometimes? You think something, but after considering that thought further, your opinion changes, because facts show you other ways to think. And while some people might decry such a thing, changing your opinion like that, I am of the opinion that wise people are the ones who are not strongly tied to their opinion, but rather base what they believe on facts, and when more facts are gather, are capable of changing that opinion.

I certainly hold to that notion, it seems wise. And going back to owls (as in that cute owl monkey in the image above) Perhaps if I was an animal, I'd like to be an owl ... I'd love to be able to fly, that's for sure!

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