A warm, furry bed and its caring mother’s rich, ivory white milk: this is all a baby needs. Its precious conscience and its insatiable thirst for power is not awake yet, but its curiosity will soon ring the bell. It will soon be exposed to wickedness, to indifference and to the deepest depths of the world. This angelic organism loses its goldest wealth: its innocence. It will fade away into a dirty, dusky hole, not willing to come back.
Everyone loses its innocence at some time. We all grow up and transform into adults. This change comes unexpectedly and can be very difficult for children. We appreciate and notice our innocence only when we have lost it already, but there is no way to earn it back. I lost mine by gaining knowledge about our world. It was a long process that was introduced by one unforgettable day in summer…
I loved to play in my family’s garden when I was younger. Just like Myop in Alice Walker’s short story `The Flowers´, I was enjoying my life one day picking up flowers in all the colors nature offers. I fished a drowning bee out of our shimmering pond. The sun was giving the sky some of its sweetest orange juice for breakfast while the wind was whistling a peaceful melody. My mom was watching me from the kitchen window of our red wine-colored brick house. A soft smile flitted across her face when she looked at me.
My cat was lying next to me in the fresh grass. Its fur was heated up by the sun. Its wasabi green eyes were filled with frankness and openness, just like mine. My cat was my best friend and one of the most charming, loveliest creatures alive. As it stood up and left the garden to discover the world, I was watching it without any fears or expectations.
A few minutes later, it came back while I was romping around. When I looked up I saw something in my cat’s face. There was something in its mouth, a bedraggled-looking thing. I came closer and could finally identify it: It was a little bird. My cat lay it down on the ground in front of me.
The bird was brown and ruffled; there was dirty blood on its feathers. It was the first time that my cat killed something. I did not understand how the most adorable living thing could have done this. And it did not seem to regret it at all. He just looked at me with his wet eyes that were becoming bigger and bigger. I stepped back when that beast was rubbing against my legs. My mom was not standing at the window anymore. The wind’s voice sounded rotten and the oranges suddenly tasted bitter.
On that day I realized that my cat is lead by its hungry instinct that can never be stopped. Humans have their conscience which should dominate us, but we also need our instinct to survive. I realized that everyone and everything instinctively strives for superiority, and that every human being has a greedy animal inside that will never be satisfied. This animal causes wars, crises and disharmony. It is impossible to get rid of it.
This realization hit my heart in its most sensible part. I started to understand the relentlessly working system of our ruthless world. In addition, I started to understand that our most precious but also most vulnerable gift is our humanity. My cat has killed numerous birds and mice since that day. I never blame it for doing that but it is still a painful punch right into my heart every time.
“Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness.
Listen to it carefully.”
― Richard Bach
This was the first writing piece this year, and even though I had no idea how to write a well-structured essay back then, it turned out well. I think I did a good job expressing my feelings and building up tension. As I said, I had no idea how to structure an essay, which is something that I could improve.