In the penetrating gloom of the witching hours when I wake, many rabbits come to scrounge for the remaining seeds the squirrels and birds leave on the ground.
It isn’t unusual for music to be quietly playing in these hours of darkness.
Vivaldi.
Meditative drones or the sounds of rain.
Sometimes light piano.
I’m sure the rabbits — with their massive, satellite-dish ears — pick it up in muffled, foggy hues through the stucco walls of the house.
But they will never understand it.
They cannot be touched by it.
The rabbits have no music in their lives with which they can breath in, hold the air, and just absorb the flowing river of undulating auditory landscapes painted by someone like Vivaldi.
They wake in their cold, cramped clay burrows full of filth and fur, climb out into the fearful black nights with eyes wide, living only to feast on what is found or flee from fiends seeking a meal.
Their lives are simple.
They live only for the single day. Find the food, mate, sleep. Then again tomorrow.
We — humans — have opportunity for meaning.
Sometimes it’s God.
Sometimes it’s Vivaldi.
Sometimes it’s the warm hand of our partner entwined with ours.
Follow for daily philosophical meditations.
These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”