Jiminy Cricket?

What is more powerful than the will to survive? What is more heart wrenching, what is more absorbing than bearing witness to survival? Than being surrounded by an entire world trying to survive with one another and against one another?

It’s 11:20 PM and there’s a cricket beside my bed, a sad little thing. His powerful hind legs hang uselessly behind him, hindering every movement his front four legs attempt to make. His back legs drag behind him, catching on the infinitesimal fibers of the carpet. Former gifts of leaping flight, now seal him to his grave. He continues to wrestle, turning, contorting himself onward, but alas to what end? Only to find himself amidst a sea of carpet that he will never leave. He pauses for a moment, his back legs hang at an inverted angle, projecting toward the ceiling, away from the ground he so desperately desires to push off of. He fights his own physical impediment without the brain capacity to understand what is going on or the brain capacity to care about his own tragic lack of understanding. Just an audible thrumming of his insect heart that beats on and on…survive…survive. He pulls onwards, a lazy heap of soft flesh, doubling over on himself, crumpling onto his front legs. His antennas move ever so subtly, marks of his continuance. His movements become less chaotic and frequent. He slows. Pulling ahead once, pausing for minutes. An attempt. A pause. An attempt. A pause. In his thrashing, his hind legs have pushed themselves farther into the air, bending his body away from the ground. He now teeters helplessly on his chest. A final ditch attempt, a last, sporadic kick of effort flips him onto his back, stomach exposed to the open air, lost, without orientation in an endless sea. His movements stop.

What is more powerful than saying no? What is more powerful than the will to let go?

**Disclaimer: the cricket who lost his life on my bedside had no affiliation (that I know of) with the Walt Disney Company