I tried to do something "nice" for the world this week, and I realize that maybe by interfering I may have hurt what I tried to help. You see, as a scientist, I know that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Hopefully, that's somewhere else, and my efforts will bear good fruit, but I cannot assume that I am always going to experience good outcomes or that my efforts, however well meaning, actually made things better. Sometimes, by interfering, the change we cause differs from what we might hope.
Monday morning, I left the building to walk from the science building to the graphic design building. On the way there, I noticed an injured and nervous little bird. Later that day, I took a handful of trail mix (I removed everything besides the nuts and dried fruit) and a crucible of water and set it near the bird. Each day, I checked the site, refilled the water, and checked on my "little friend". At length, he grew to anticipate and tolerate if not welcome my visits, and I patted myself on the back for my efforts to save this little bird.
This morning, I found a very different scene. When I arrived at the spot to refresh what I left for him, I found the bird dead. Some of his flesh had been picked from his head. Up on a ledge not too far away I saw as I walked back toward the stairway entrance that there was a young hawk sitting there. It was then that I wondered if my "help" had been for the hawk rather than the bird.
You see, there is a natural order, a natural law to things. Some things are supposed to win and grow stronger, and other things are supposed to fail to give rise to what was victorious. Humans however like to prop up the weakest among us and subsidize things that cannot stand on their own and then reward ourselves for our virtue when what we're doing is probably harmful to the whole.
This small bird probably became dependent on me rather than reliant on itself for its own prospects. While it's possible that he would have died regardless of my intervention, I think I set him up for this particular tragic end. He knew where to go to get food and water. Doubtless other birds knew this too. Eventually, this put him at risk for predation because he would not stray to a better place because I gave him food and water. The other birds knew this, and they took advantage of it. In giving him a crutch, I may have doomed him to his end rather than saving him.
Sometimes it's best to leave things be. If we were to assume that things are ours to do with as we please, we become as guilty as any mastermind who meddles without the right or the authority. I am not a vet; I am not a bird. I do not owe that bird a thing. I did this because I wanted to help. Instead, he was eaten by another bird. I found that sad. We like to think we can change things, that we are special, that we have some sort of control. We forget that every time we establish a dependency, we weaken others. If keeping an animal in captivity and feeding it and caring for it makes it weaker then so does subsidizing a person, medically, financially, pharmaceutically, etc. We manipulate nature, and we weaken our own.
I am not saying that everything we do does more harm than good. Sometimes humans do great things. I am however not convinced that the things we do are either as virtuous or as effective as we betimes like to think. When your efforts to change your stars or the stars and fates of others fail, remember that you are not the only force acting on a situation. There will be a bump, and there will be a bruise. Sometimes there will be a win, and sometimes there will be a loss. That is the nature of things, that everything has balance, and that sometimes the opposite will happen from what we hope. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try or that we did things wrong. We do the best we can with what we have. Then we wait and see what nature has in mind.
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