Worms, and Kindness

It was a brutally cold Michigan winter day, as I got my snow stuff on and trudged out to our backyard in Gobles. The tree's branches were weighed down with snow, and the snow on the ground reached my knees. I didn't know where my brothers had went, but I found myself in the back looking at an old sled that had gotten filled with water, and frozen over. Inspecting it, I found that a worm had gotten lodged in the ice and was frozen inside of it. I ripped my gloves off and started digging at the ice with my bare fingers, in hopes to get the worm out. Finally, I got it. My hands frozen and red from the cold, I held the worm in my hand. It didn't occur to me until then that obviously it was dead and there was no saving it, but I dug a hole in the ground and covered it with earth. I couldn't have been more than 9 or 10. I don't know if I've ever told anyone in my family that story. Maybe I was embarrassed that I even tried to save a worm that was clearly frozen to death, or that I had put myself through all that digging for nothing. But I remembered this day as I walked from my little apartment at school to the laundry room. It's been raining for days now, and worms littered the sidewalk on my path. After I dropped everything off and my hands were free, I picked up and returned at least 20 worms back into the grass, safe from being stepped on or picked up by birds. I've always had a weird thing with saving worms. I even sacrificed getting my phone stole in high school by saving one. I was sitting outside on a bench, and I saw a group of people throwing worms in the trash can. Infuriated, I went over and demanded they put them back in the ground. In doing so, I left my phone on the bench and forgot about it, later being stolen by another student.

I don't know what it is about worms that I feel like I need to protect, but I feel bad for them. No arms, or legs, or eyes and they move incredibly slow, but also contribute so much to keeping our soil clean. Without them, things wouldn't be decomposed properly. They are helpless, and yet so important to the ecosystem. I've been thinking about what saving worms means about my personality, and I think it has to do with my need to stand up for those that deserve it. Worms, people, whatever. Any living being that deserves a voice of reason, I want to be that reason. If I see a worm slowly wriggling itself back to the earth from the sidewalk, I cannot in good conscious just leave it to fend for itself. I physically cannot walk away. I don't know why this is so important to me. I don't know why I'm writing about it. Maybe I need someone to help me the way I help worms. Sometimes I feel like I'm slowly trying to dig myself out of a deep, dark hole of sadness and I wish someone could just pluck me up in their fingers and I would see the light again. Maybe life would feel better if we all felt willing to unselfishly help the people around us. To use our voices and actions for the people that are not heard enough. To protect each other from the harshness that society brings into our lives. I don't know. I'm feeling sad about the division and break in our country. We need to sit back and relax. And I am disappointed more people haven't taken the time to think about what the earth is saying to us. Take a breather, remember we are all human, we all have feelings and emotions and insecurities and issues. Not one person on this earth can tell exactly what the other is feeling, we are all unique in our suffering. Why not make it a little less awful and be kind to those around you? And to worms? They deserve your kindness.

This isn't very long, nor constructed very well. But now you have read three stories of me saving worms. Maybe this will encourage you to reach out to someone you know needs some help, or simply, to help a worm find its way back to its rightful place in the ground. We all deserve to feel safe and secure in this world.