Every now and then I think about David Attenborough's brilliant narrative strategy, and how to apply it to my own writing.
I remember a nephew, when young, happily watching baby seals, then happily watching baby polar bears, & then... having his love for both brought into conflict.
Or following a chick's struggle to fly off a cliff face - cheering when he didn't crash! - just to get snapped up as prey.
To hold it all in tension & not despair is one of the greatest challenges of being human.
(History nerd aside:
In the early 19th Century, Malthusian ideas about exponential population growth & natural overshoot took hold, haunting people with the reality that nature was not "designed" for all to thrive.
Darwin was a sentimentalist about this, too - he hated what evolutionary theory suggested about natural cruelty, saw zero sign of a benevolent creator in nature's torturous ways, and suggested that readers try to imagine that death usually came quickly and the "happiest" survived.)
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