Bear Story

Bears probably have the most pointless existence ever.

Yes, they are very good at controlling the amount of fish in a stream, and they are very important for maintaining that particular biosphere. But on a personal level, their lives are sort of devoid of meaning. They only do two things: sleep and eat. The purely cause and effect relationship in their lives strips it of all purpose.

Bears hibernate every winter. They do this because in the winter there is no food and it is much easier to survive while you are unconscious at that time, provided you were fat enough to last the whole winter without starving to death.

When they wake up in the spring, they start eating again, getting as fat as possible in preparation for their long sleep, so that they may survive another winter and start eating all over again.

Now, we know what it's like to be asleep; you have absolutely no idea what is going on and even if you have a good dream and you really enjoyed sleeping eventually you have to get up and then you forget what was so great about that dream in the first place. So why would bears want to spend half their lives unconscious?

Some would wonder if maybe that's just what their life is. They eat because they have to in order to survive the winter, and then they sleep because if the don't, they'll starve during the cold months. But why would you want to continue to exist if you are only doing it to avoid your death?

Really, bears spend so much time sleeping because their lives actually happen in dreams. They only wake up in the summer so that they can go back to living come winter.