Squirrel School Degree

If you are thinking that going to Squirrel School might be a wise life-move, it is a sure sign that you are a part of community that knows a good thing when you see it.

Perhaps you are debating whether going to Squirrel School is a worthwhile endeavor. I don’t blame you; after all, some people may scoff. On the other hand, they are probably the same people that scoff at anything that appears creatively different.

However, if you have gotten this far, I am thinking you are not of that ilk. So let me tempt you with just two of the things Squirrel School may teach you.

First, you will find that they work and play with equal commitment and joy. Unlike most of us, they don’t make a distinction between the two. If they are doing something – they are doing it because that’s what they do.

Is there a difference between gathering nuts, and chasing each other around the tree? In squirrel-world there doesn’t appear to be one. This is unlike human-world where there are a certain number of hours in a day called work, and the rest is – well okay still work, but listed under the heading called maintenance, with a teeny-tiny bit of playtime allowed if we have been good. Otherwise, we work.

Then we take time off, or go on vacation, to get away from nut gathering and maintenance of home and body, and return to work more tired than before.

Perhaps it has to do with purpose. Squirrels, like everything else in nature, except humans, just do what they do, and that’s their purpose. Humans, not so much. Well, most humans. We have to have big reasons for what we do. Even kids these days.

Remember being a kid and spending all day outside for no reason but to play? Well, some of us do, and I bet we all feel as if something has gone wrong, because that time seems to have been deleted from the growing up years.

Here’s another reason for attending Squirrel School. Squirrels don’t shut down their lives because time has passed. Can you tell the difference if an adult squirrel is young or old? Not me. If you can, you have probably already graduated from Squirrel School, and are a professor to be reckoned with. Please share what you have learned!

When I watch squirrels, they appear to work and cavort on the same level no matter what age they might be. Perhaps it is because they don’t have a clock on every tree, a calendar in every nest, or check their computer or cell phone to see what time it is because they need to get to work – oh wait, that’s because they don’t need to measure time, so they have no idea that time has passed, which leaves them ageless. Sounds like a good idea to me!

We do the opposite. Time passes and we notice. We notice, and notice, and notice some more. Than we attach belief systems about what time passing does to us. It doesn’t have to be that way for us. We get to choose. Especially the belief that we get less able as time as passed. We can stop thinking that is how it is. It isn’t.

It’s just a worldview agreement that it works that way. This makes it our decision if we want to remain committed to a belief system that limits and dims life as what appears as time passing, or we can follow the inward pull to returning to the loves and joys that we had time for when we were children.

As we gain years, I think there is a tipping point where we can choose to begin a return to the feeling of youth, while maintaining the wisdom we have collected.

Lately I have been reading many of the books I read when I was that kid. Amazingly I still love them, and am discovering that being a kid while an adult is a joy that no one should miss out on. The squirrels don’t.

Head off to Squirrel School. If you feel guilty about spending that time just watching squirrels, make up a degree called squirrel watching and once you have spent the required number of hours (you pick how many) award it to yourself and hang it on the wall. Invite family and friends for the ceremony. It just might change the world – one squirrel degree at a time.