In an
ordinary green field, in middle England, a cow surveyed its surroundings and
wondered whether there should be more to life. The grass in the neighbouring
field looked a delicious shade of green, rich and vibrant, evidently full of
nutrients. For the past week, her daydreams had been filled with the vicarious
delights of eating that grass. That must be, she had thought, the acme of
experience. She slowly chewed on air, pretending the virgin grass was on her
tongue, between her teeth, sliding down her throat into her rumen, there to
soften up before passing into her reticulum, omasum and abomasum.
But now she wasn’t so sure. What if
it was a trick of the light? What if that grass wasn’t all she imagined it do
be? What if – and this was highly likely, the more she thought about it – what
if beyond that field there was another field with even richer, greener grass?
And beyond that another one? And yet another one? It was too much to
contemplate. She might walk two miles in search of the perfect grass and never
find it. And what if it was here all along, beneath her hooves, only she wasn’t
intelligent or cultivated or educated enough to recognise it?
Then,
in confusion and growing distress, she began to wonder whether the quest for
perfect grass should be the summit of her ambition anyway? Couldn’t she aspire
to something grander than the consumption of monocotyledonous plantlife? Was
this as good as it got? So began the cow’s existential crisis.
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