The Heartbreaking Reality of The Circle Life.

In the wild, all manner of life exists according to the law of the jungle, and for species to survive they must achieve a fragile equilibrium of predator and prey. A few days ago, I saw an interaction that I sat with in discomfort and contemplation regarding life itself.

As I stood there, one of the world's most ruthless predators, a tiger, had taken out its mortality upon a mother and left her cub to fend in between the wildness of life. While this horrible event resonates, it pales to the other stories that occur at the heart of the wilderness every day.

The tiger, a creature of instinct and power, had simply done what it was born to do it had sought food, and it had found it in the guise of another living being.

The mother a casualty in the unfolding struggle for survival had fallen prey. The loss of the mother was a tragedy not only for her, but also for her helpless cub. The mother had struggled to live but nature had prevailed. Such is the way of the wild. There's no malice. no hatred in the hunt, only a relentless pursuit of survival. That's a hard reality but it's the one they live in, motivated by instincts we humans can only try to understand.

What impressed my mind was the cub's presence. It clung to its dead mother's body, unaware that she was gone. It was love, and it was dependence, and it was a bond that would never again form, at least not in the same way.

The cub was possibly too young to comprehend the tragic twist of fate it had just observed and didn't let go of the body of the mother, hunting for warmth, safety, and comfort that would never be offered again. It was an extremely stark scene.

As I watched the cub, I couldn't help but think of the many examples in human life where (like one of the many cubs I saw) children are left without one parent, too young (or unready) to fully comprehend the scale of what has just happened.

I can't help feeling that this raw emotion, this instice search for reassurance in the absence of a loved one, resonated with the same instinct. For as much as the world can be cruel, it is also full of moments like this, moments of ungainly tenderness, where losing a loved one can create such a void that the mind itself can barely comprehend it.

The tiger, its quarry secure, moved on. It is the nature of things predators do not wait. They trudge onward, propelled by instinct to eat, to live. Now orphaned, the cub would have to survive on its own. The question that sprung in my mind was, what is to come of the cub?

How could it possibly survive in a world so cruel, with no mother to shelter or nurture it? Would it become at home in the wild,or would it be another casualty in this savage hunt for survival?

This heartbreaking scene is not a rarity in nature. It's a reminder of the fragility of life, our potential to rapidly change the balance. Nature, for all its beauty and ferocity, works on the whims of survival, and it can be cruel.

But in these times of loss and vulnerability, there is also a resounding reminder of the fragile strength we possess during the hardest times in the human experience.

So while I think about that mother tiger who was lost and why I couldn't save them both, I think about loss and as a mother myself, the pain and sacrifice that makes life and motherhood possible.

I considered my own mother and the innumerable sacrifices she made to raise me and my siblings. But the tireless devotion and the endless love of her tiger,who had sacrificed her all, cared and raised her descendant cub, only to be taken away by the cruel fangs of the wild. It was a bittersweet reminder of the love and struggle that are woven into the fabric of becoming a parent.