For all our efforts

Let me start with this...

Regardless of the popularity of my TWIT posts this isn't one of them although the message may resonate with that subject matter.

A few days ago it was very cold here.  Uncharacteristically cold for the part of the country I live in.  As such anything below 30F makes the local news for days.  

It was night and I went out on my back porch to have a smoke break.  I'm a bit of a neat freak so I don't smoke in the house, car or anywhere else enclosed.  I suppose I suffer for my vices for the sake of my compulsions.

As I stood there in the dark, feeling the chill of the night air permeating all 4 layers of my vain attempts to ignore the cold I heard a strange sound.

There's a pool in the back yard and at night I'm not used to hearing anything related to it except for the sound of the pump.  This night something was different.

I heard what could only be the sound of something thrashing about in the water.  Of course I had to see what it was.

Let me preface my actions with this; I've had stray animals from the feline and feathered variety end up in the pool on multiple occasions.  I can't count how many birds and kittens I've saved from a watery grave.  

I have a respect for living things.  Especially those that don't know any better and end up in peril from a world dominated by man-made hazards nature never prepared them for.

I flipped on the back lights and found a small bird flapping hopelessly near the deep end of the pool.  I knew the water was near freezing being only slightly warmer than the air above it.

I retrieved my leaf net and scooped the little bird out placing him gently on one of the benches near the house.  No longer in danger of drowning and out of sight and easy reach of any of the neighborhood cats, I felt he was safe.

The night air was cutting though and the little bird was wet.  I retrieved a small towel and picked him up briefly to get most of the water off of him.  He let out a soft squawk in protest but gave no further resistance.  

Satisfied that I'd at least gotten him mostly dry without traumatizing him too badly I let him be.  It was below freezing and while I wanted to bring the bird in the house to warm up a bit I could tell it would just traumatize him more so I did the next best thing and made him a little lean-to kind of structure out of an old stiff terry cloth mop head I'd found in a closet.  

I put it over him and he nestled into one side and after a short while went to sleep.

I checked on him throughout the night and in the morning I was happy to find that he had gone.  As in flew away BTW not lifeless on the pavement or a cat's dinner. 

It felt good that maybe I had a hand in saving the little bird.  Left in the pool he wouldn't have lasted much longer and I can't help but think that my discovery of his predicament was no accident.

To do a kindness to the helpless is never in vain but there was another lesson in store for me...

Tonight I walked out on my back porch again and while the air was still cold, it didn't bite quite as much as the night I found that little bird flapping helplessly in the water.

I noticed that against the dim moonlight reflecting on the pool was something out of place.  I'd thought it was just some leaves until I flipped on the lights just as I'd did that night.

If you've guessed that I found the same little bird again you're right but this time I was too late to save him.

He hung in the water lifeless but stoic with wings firm against his tiny body with head held erect as if defying his sad end.

It struck me.

I hadn't saved him at all only delayed what was an inevitable end.

I may have facilitated another day of life but the lesson hadn't been learned.  There he was in the same predicament but this time nobody to save him.

It brought to mind something that I'd been thinking about.  Not so much an epiphany as an affirmation of belief.

That as hard as we may try to influence the fate of others it is ultimately up to them.  Free will is the cornerstone of many belief and societal systems.  That we can do as we please even to our own detriment.  

Sometimes a gift isn't accepted.  Living things have free will regardless of whether we agree with it or not.  

If our moral compass is wrong it's up to us to discover it.  Nobody else can set it right.  

That little bird chose to fly back into the pool.  I can't know the reason but the choice to fly into oblivion was his regardless of my efforts.

We can't truly know the mind of another we can only guess.  

We can't really know if we've had a positive influence on someone else just because of the act of trying to help them.  We can only observe what they do with what we've offered.

It's up to them and only them to use or even ignore the gift.

I won't stop trying to help where I can but in the end I know that all I can do is offer an opinion, an option.  You have to make the decision of how you bear your own crosses and quell your own demons.  Your path is your own.

I'd have liked the little bird to survive but it wasn't my choice.  I'd done what I could do for him.  It was up to him what came next.

Just as it's up to you what you do next.