Willy the Worm

Willy the Worm
by Scott Bradley

Digging in the garden as much as I am (making raised beds) I come across many a worm. Most are wrestled down and placed in a nearby raised bed where I promise them a worm paradise. Some of these, however, are already now two, having been sliced in half by the shovel. I'm told they manage to live on as two distinct worms. I hope so. And I hope getting cut in half doesn't hurt too much.

As I watch these poor critters I wonder which one is the worm called Willy and which one needs a new name. Would the real Willy please crawl left.

This thing called 'identity' can become very confusing. As humans, we have a strong sense of personal identity, yet it certainly is an apparently, exceedingly momentary thing — so transitory, in fact, that one might think it worth giving it up right now and getting it over with. It does, after all, cause a lot of grief.

This may sound like an invitation to suicide, and in a way it is. There seems to me to be a definite parallel between death and enlightenment — indeed, the enlightened are a kind of walking dead. If you lose your self while alive, isn't this to experience what you fear most in death? Enlightenment would then be a co-option of death. So, we could say like Paul, "Death, where is your sting?"

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.