The Turtle Lesson

I wrote this for my school newspaper, but due to unforeseen circumstances (read: a pandemic) it has not been and probably never will be published. Hence my posting it here instead since I liked writing it and don't want it to go to waste. Also, the "high school" I go to is part of a k-12 school and it's called the "Upper School" for no good reason other than that I go to a considerably pretentious private school. There is a teacher who makes occasional announcements during assemblies called "turtle lessons," wherein we learn quaint little morals from anthropomorphic turtles; coincidentally, there is an actual, live turtle that lives inside a glass container in the front hallway of the "Upper School." There's your context, now enjoy the fucking article.

In my time at the Upper School, turtles have become intrinsically connected with the lessons we learn from them during assemblies. Often, these lessons ask us to stop and look around, to appreciate the world’s natural beauty for what it is, and to embrace the warm, palatable wisdom of these charismatic reptile-sages. However, if we try and put the shell on for ourselves, we may find it to be a bit heavier than we expected. This is a different kind of turtle lesson.

In this over-analysis, we will begin with a relatively significant stretch in terms of our understanding of the turtle psyche, albeit one that is not outside the realm of possibility. We must assume, for the purposes of this essay, that turtles are capable of more conscious thought than merely a robotic cycle of “eat, sleep, reproduce, repeat.” I’m not saying, necessarily, that turtles are able to lucidly express their thoughts and feelings (although that would make a nice explanation for where the turtle lessons come from), but I don’t think it would be impossible for a turtle to feel some sort of emotion. Perhaps they feel sad at times and happy at others, for reasons they don’t understand. I could imagine an older turtle feeling a sense of vague confusion upon reaching a spot he often frequented as a youngster, only to discover that humans had paved a parking lot over it. Maybe turtles can even ponder their own existence, but in case they can’t, I’m here to do that for them.

Let’s consider the turtle outside of Ms. Healey’s office. He is called Patrick. His living space occupies a couple of cubic feet, and everyone in the school sees and walks by him as they walk into school each morning. The other day, I took a longer look at Patrick than usual as I passed him. He was underwater, swimming with his nose pressed against the glass of his tank. I imagined he was bewildered by this invisible barrier which separated him from the outside world. I paused and wondered what Patrick thought of his life. He probably knows very little, if anything, about the natural world where his ancestors evolved, given that he was born in a pet store and subsequently bought. Now he floats around aimlessly in his glass box, unsure of what to do with all his free time.

When Patrick first came to Steward, he was probably frightened by us; we humans must appear just as strange and alien to him as he does to us. However, he probably got used to us as time went by, and eventually the novelty of watching us walk by grew dull, giving way to a weary, lonely sort of resignation. Patrick gets fed at regular intervals, which he thinks is a nice distraction from the mundanity of everyday life, but the rest of his time is spent looking outside the glass, wondering where the people go when he can no longer see them. He has no idea what he’s doing with his life, forever floating around his box. Patrick feels lost, but on the contrary, he couldn’t be farther from lost – he knows his entire home inside and out. He knows his own surroundings better than he knows himself.

What can we learn from Patrick? He exists here in the upper school only to entertain us; is there no further meaning to his life? What philosophical value is there to watching him melancholically drift through the stagnant water in his tank? Patrick, in every practical sense, is a materially comfortable prisoner. He has no responsibilities, he never has to work, and we may think this to be an ideal sort of life. Patrick's ease of life is almost enviable, but it is because of his undemanding lifestyle that his imprisonment is so absolute. If Patrick could somehow escape his glass cage, an impossible feat in itself, he would die soon afterwards. Maybe he would be stepped on by a careless student in the hall; if not, he would be crushed by a car in the parking lot, and if he were to survive the arduous journey over pavement, he would get eaten by a fox or other predator. Finally, if Patrick managed to escape all of these dangers, his reward would be a slow, painful death by starvation in the wild; he doesn't even know how to get food for himself. His regular meals and life of leisure, when viewed objectively, are privileged compared to what seems like a wild turtle’s constant struggle in nature. But when we examine Patrick’s hapless condition, we see that these luxuries are actually the causes of his misery––his ease of life has cursed him with a mundanity worse than any physical suffering.

We now have a modest understanding of Patrick’s condition. He knows very little about his natural ancestry or the meaning of his existence, but has become accustomed to the artificial environment where he lives. Even if he wanted to escape, he couldn’t; so he just passes the time, looking around. What parallels are there between his life and ours? At first thought, it would be outrageous to consider that we live in a cage, free-willed humans as we are. But think deeper. Have you ever peered beyond the artifice? Look out the window and examine the horizon. With your nose pressed against the glass, watch the distant trees quiver in the breeze; imagine the warmth of the sun, gracing all that you see before you with its gentle, pure warmth. Consider that this is happening now, as it has happened for millions of years, even before the first hominids walked the Earth. Consider also that where you now stand, this same process took place. If the whole world somehow returned to its natural, pre-anthropocenic state in the blink of an eye, you would be surrounded by a vibrant deciduous forest. Instead you are sitting (or at least I am, as I write this) in a climate-controlled building, surrounded by plastic furniture illuminated by fluorescent lights. With this in mind, we can see how we live in an artificial environment. It’s strange to think about, but irrefutably true, that most everything around us has been made by and for humans. The contrivance is omnipresent, from the landscaping of our lawns to the manufacturing of our commodities, and even the words we use to describe them; there is no escape from the constructs of humanity.

We, like Patrick, live in glass cages. Ours are much, much larger; for some of us, our cages could span continents. The difference between us and him is that we, unlike Patrick, can control the size of our cages. We cannot escape our cages, because doing so would require abdication of everything created by humans (language, clothing, etc.) and living our lives in nature exactly as our earliest predecessors did. What we can do is explore our cages; we can learn, think, and feel. Contained as we are, we can expand our sphere of awareness until we reach the limits of what we can do inside a human society. Wherever we stop trying to learn, to grow, to achieve, that is where the glass wall sets in. At that point, we will wallow in our past experiences, sometimes wonder about what it’s like beyond the glass, and wander around our boxes, unsure of what to do in our free time. By following rules, by sticking to routines, by accepting our conditions, we are confined. The only way to live freely in a cage is to explore not only the cage, but ourselves. Unlike Patrick, we can understand our surroundings and ourselves, and this is the only thing that redeems our imprisoned existence.