How many of you believe in reincarnation? I ran across one theory that kind of makes sense. I call it the Jackass Theory.

It goes like this: We start existence as a tiny flicker of soul stuff, just enough to qualify as a red worm. After a few hundred lives as a worm, we graduate into something like a flea. A few thousand flea lives qualifies us as a mouse. In turn we grow into rabbits, then raccoons and so forth. After a few million incarnations, we finally develop enough soul to finally qualify as a human.

You may notice that in the past 100 years, the human population has skyrocketed. The earth is swamped with human bodies. At the same time, the number of lower animals has been declining. There are not enough human souls ready to occupy all the human bodies, while the supply of lower souls now outstrips the available animal bodies. That forces some lower animal souls to reincarnate into human bodies.

In other words, the world is full of jackasses parading around in human form. Just think about it for a minute. I’ll bet you know a few.

Now jackasses are herd animals. They are only comfortable in a large crowd of their own kind. Therefore, they migrate around the country looking for ever larger herds. There is a giant herd of them wandering around on the banks of the Potomac River. Of course some of them think they are elephants, but none of them have that kind of memory.

It is amusing to watch them. They will stampede in some direction creating a big cloud of dust. Then, for no apparent reason, they will go storming off in another direction. They all try to lead the herd, but it is hard to be a leader when they are going so many directions at the same time.

And then there is the noise. Jackasses love the sound of their own voices. Each of them tries to out bray the others. Soon, they are all braying so loud the only voice they can hear is their own.

Jackasses are heavy eaters with a preference for green things. They have to be fed constantly and can consume massive amounts of food in a single day.

I sometimes think it would be great if we could build a high fence around the whole area and never let them out. We could toss over a few bales of stale hay from time to time and watch them run all over each other to get to them. Soon, they will all be so busy trying to get more hay than the other guy, that they will forget why they are there. Then we could live our lives as we wish without having to constantly dodge stampeding herds of jackasses.

What? You say that will never happen? You are probably right, but I can still dream, can’t I?

Copyright 2005 by Frank Gillispie

For reproduction permission, contact Frank Gillispie at P.O. Box 521, Hull, Georgia 30646 – phone 706-549-7966. frankgillispie@charter.net

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Frankly Speaking by Frank Gillispie, this item was published with permission of the author. Published January 12, 2005 in the Madison County Journal - www.mainstreetnews.com