I used to work in a bar.

One time, late at night, when I was the only bartender, I saw a mouse. Maybe it was still young, I don’t know — but it was small and round. I was depressed, and dissociated, and so I probably thought ‘this isn’t my problem’ and didn’t say or do anything, and left the mouse to scurry off.

An hour later, as I was cleaning up before going home, I found that someone had crushed the mouse. Its frail but round tiny body lay motionless by the side of the bar counter.

Today is a lovely day. The weather is finally getting cool, and the breeze stays in the trees with a lazy motion. The sun shines through the leaves, and the sky is an endless blue, not a cloud in it.

“Perhaps this is the garden”, I think to myself only now on reflection, because it fits the story well, and because I happened to be eating an apple as I walked with my dog throughout the neighborhood.

On the sidewalk lies a mouse. Flies buzzing around it.

It had a tiny snout, and whiskers. I think it almost would have looked cute, if not for the flies and the fact its lack of motion meant I knew it was dead.

Thankfully my dog completely ignored it.

Whenever I travel I love to look up at the clouds and the trees. And that’s why I think one of the most beautiful places in the world is the American northeast. The green mountain states, where the trees stretch over you, the clouds will lay themselves atop the hills, and you can see endless stars paint the midnight sky. There is a vibrant ecosystem full of life — and the trees are dying as insects and fungus consume them, and mammals are rotted by disease under those decaying trees while birds freeze.

I think the universe is indifferent — if anything, attributing emotion to it doesn’t really make sense. It just is. We just are. There’s no intentionality.

If there’s an arc to history then it is the one we make, but there was never a plan or grand narrative. If we do one day ‘win’ and create a prosperous and wonderful future that stretches out until the end, then it will have been a messy road to it — and probably it’ll stay messy, even in our forever after.

In this one single moment in time, there is an unfathomable amount of joy and beauty and suffering and decay. The sun is shining, and someone just kissed the love of their life for the first time. The light streams through the leaves, and creates a golden halo around the flowers. Months ago, late at night, a limping deer passed me on the sidewalk — and now it has likely starved to death. A child just died of a disease my government could have prevented, and deliberately chose not to. A mouse lies on the side walk motionless, with flies buzzing around it.

I don’t think we have some kind of moral obligation to end all suffering. I mean, it kinda depends on what one means by the word I guess. But some suffering might be good, and some might be instrumentally necessary for the good. I’m not an antinatalist, and I think clumps of pleasure receptors stuck in vats sounds like an atrociously dismal vision for our future.

But things could be better than they are, I think.

No matter what any of us thinks or feels, and no matter how beautiful the day is today, somewhere else there are people who need help. Just because it usually isn’t on the sidewalk in front of me doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

And I guess I hope one day I won’t have to see random dead creatures, not because they’re hidden from me, but because the world is just a better place for everyone.

Even the mice.