the lady or the chicken

I pulled up in the public parking lot next to the restaurant where I'd be meeting a friend for lunch.  I noted the location of the parking payment kiosk, and saw my own parking space number, 468.  I started walking towards the kiosk.  It was sunny, but not too warm, and the clouds were graying slightly, giving the few leaves tumbling through the air a chance to stand out.

As I approached the kiosk, I saw a woman walk away from it.  She walked to her car, made a disgruntled face, then returned to the kiosk ahead of me.  When I got close, I saw her tapping the screen in frustration, getting an error message.  "Space 520 is not found.  Please enter a valid space."

She threw up her hands in frustration and turned to me.  "It's saying it can't find it," she told me, as if I could help.  I shrugged.  "That's very strange," I answered, and waited patiently for her to get out of the way.  She showed no signs of moving.  "What should I do?"

I gestured towards an empty space near where I'd parked.  "Maybe you could try that one."  She frowned, then squinted.  "470," she read out loud.  "Yeah," I said, pointing to the kiosk, "try it."  She shook her head.  "Somebody might take it before I get there."  She went to move her car.

I typed in 468, and it worked like a charm.  I can only assume that 470 helped her out.  I was late for lunch, and was gone by the time she had returned to the kiosk.

I was kind of shaken by that woman's need to look to me for assistance.  I didn't feel especially qualified to be of help.  It seemed that she was simply blown away by something so simple and straightforward refusing to work for her.  She had a lot of faith in the systems that underlie our society, and that faith was shaken.  Suddenly, she had to doubt all of her assumptions.  Not everything makes sense.  In her terror, she turned to me.  I'm no authority, but I was the nearest thing she could put her trust in.  I hope I helped.

That story was true, and so is this one.  There was a chicken, once, who lived a normal chicken life.  One day, that chicken's owner decided he wanted to eat that chicken, and took an axe to that chicken's head.  The axe blow did not kill the chicken.  The chicken's head was removed, but a piece of the brain stem remained.  That piece was enough.  The chicken could stand, and move around, and its autonomic functions continued unabated. The owner forced soft food into its esophagus with an eye dropper, and took the chicken on the road.  That was Mike the Headless Chicken, an American hero.

Do you see what these stories have in common?  A woman confounded by the failure of an underlying system, and a bird unconcerned by the obliteration of an overlying one.  Think long and hard, and ask yourself what really matters in your life, and which one you'd rather be.