Three-Toed Sloths

Thought I better start reading the book for my book club today since I'm supposed to be finished with it in 12 days.  The book is  Life of Pi by Martel,  On the second page it gives a description of a three-toed sloth.  I thought it was very interesting and that it applied to people. So, here it is:

It is a highly intriguing creature.  It's only real habit is indolence...   is not well informed about the outside world.  On a scale of 2 to 10, where 2 represents unusual dullness and 10 extreme acuity, Beebe (1926) gave the sloth's senses of taste, touch, sight and hearing a rating of 2, and its sense of smell a rating of 3.  If you come upon a sleeping three-toed sloth in the wild, two or three nudges should suffice to awaken it; it will then look sleepily in every direction but yours.  Why it should look about is uncertain since the sloth sees everything in a Magoo-like blur.  As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.  Beebe reported that firing guns next to sleeping or feeding sloths elicited little reaction.  And the sloth's slightly better since of smell should not be overestimated.  They are said to be able to sniff and avoid decayed branches, but Bulloch (1968) reported that sloths fall to the ground clinging to decayed branches "often".  How does it survive, you might ask.  Precisely by being slow.  Sleepiness and slothfulness keep it out of harm's way...   The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment.  "A good-natured smile is forever on its lips"...

I could be really going out on a limb here--and not even about the slothfulness necessarily, after all, I'm not the most ambitious person in the world, but...I think there are people whose senses are as dull as the sloth's.  They aren't ever seeking out new adventures.  They don't want to leave their comfort zone.  They wouldn't think of tasting new foods.  Their lives are even-keel.  (Is that the right word?)  They are happy all the time--the three-toed sloth happy.

Not me.  When I'm happy, I'm really happy and when I'm not, well...   I want to see it all;  do it all;  taste it all;  and feel it all;   Drag!  Opposition in all things really plays with that philosophy.  Half of everything is crappy, yucky or just plain wrong. 

These days I hold to the idea that as bad as things are in your life--that's how good God can make things for you later--and so if you're the sloth and your scale of  happy/sad,  good/bad,  easy/hard  never tips very far, then you really don't have all that much to look forward to later.

This may possibly be my most 'only Michelle could ever understand what she means' post ever.