When I was young, like a lot of children, and especially boys, I had an intense interest in insects. I loved finding them, watching them, holding them, letting them climb on me, and showing them to others. They were mysterious and odd in so many delightfully foreign and creepy ways.
Finding that others did not share my affection was another strange oddity to be explored. Seeing their unfounded fear as weakness, my first impulse was to lay claim to my new super power and demonstrate how I could hold and tolerate their Kryptonite. Now, instead of respected for my strength and bravery, by such close association I too became creepy and odd, and a bit misunderstood. But that sat quite well with me because I sat quite well with bugs. However, by hanging tight with my bug buddies I also became one to be avoided.
I think I became a bit distracted by the thrill of scaring or unsettling with a bug, such that my goal was no longer simply sharing the beauty of the bug. The rejection of something so interesting and beautiful was irrational and produced within me a small undercurrent of coercion, "Face your fears damn it!" "Love this beautifully strange and harmless bug, you bug bigot!". I don't remember ever being mean with bugs toward other people, at least not intentionally so, maybe I was. But I do remember being irritated by the irrational and inconceivable levels of discomfort and thus being a little pushy, chiding their fears as unfounded and insisting that they make some concession of approach. At any rate, I'm sure I changed no one's mind about bugs during my childhood years. If I did it was most likely in the opposite direction than that intended, a bug based backfire effect.
Like bugs, fears are also strange and creepy things, especially the unfounded ones. Most fears are based on something, and then blown terribly out of proportion. A grasshopper can't harm you, but a trillion can by eating all your crops. It is a bit creepy, their multi-directional unpredictability of movement, their clinging velcro-like feet, and that inkish spit oozing from creepy meaty multifaceted mandibles. Bugs can bite, sting, poison, and spread germs and disease. All things to be avoided and controlled for sure. But bugs are beneficial in so many ways as well, and some 'bad' bugs while not directly 'good' for us are beneficial to their particular ecosystem and thus ultimately good for us.
How sad it is to never love or appreciate the beauty of a bug, to let its presence or potential presence strike you with fear and avoidance, rather than understanding it? You are thus not fully free to do the things you love with the threat of its constant potential to be somewhere in your environment.
My wife likes to garden her flowerbeds, but as the grasshoppers come out, her flowerbeds go increasingly untended. Visibly upset, she'll often come and get me to remove one. I cannot simply set it loose somewhere else; it must be eliminated. Luckily we have chickens so its death can be made worthy of something. When in bug whisperer mode, I calmly capture it, a thing usually done easily without much distress. Holding it in the cradle of my cupped hands while walking toward the chicken run, I bring it to my face, to view it eye to eye and whisper it a soft apology, pronounce its final rites, and giving it a mock kiss goodbye before casting it to the eager chickens. Observing the cycle of life I wish it well on its new adventure should there be one.
Why all this talk about bugs? Because I have found as an adult that I have a tendency to want to speak to people's fears and insecurities, hoping that in examining them or bringing them out I can help them lay some of them to rest. I tend to turn over their rocks, and hop into their window wells looking for bugs and creepy curiosities. I'm pretty sure, although uncomfortable, that I want people to do the same for me. I'm a little weird that way.
Fear is the mind killer, and the key limitation to open experience and understanding. Much of what stops people's thinking and exploration is based on fear, fear of being wrong, fear of letting go, fear of change. Some things are best approached with respect, or left alone, being admired and observed at a distance. You can call that fear. Maybe it's the healthy side of it. But my goal in life is to fear nothing and understand everything - quite a lofty goal, I know.
I've found so many times that if I study and explore what makes me afraid I find something to love, admire, and even inhabit mentally in a free, fun, and exploratory way. I love the dark, the night, all things that creep and crawl, all things that snap and snarl. I realize that I am my own special kind of weird and now the trick I see for me to master is how to use discretion so as not to share in a way that causes in others any source of fear, or sense of attack, or repulsion. Living with social animals the biggest clout and influence is had by the retention of your in-group identity. Your being perceived as an insider, a friend, not a foe, is your best bet to influence change in a group or another person. Once you get labelled an outtie, all of the cognitive biases kick in like a mega arsenal to shut you and your foreign ideas down.
This is my challenge because much of what I accept and admire is repulsive to a mind trapped in an existential dilemma with a profound need to seek out comfort, meaning, hope, perpetuity of life and soul. Many of my views are antithetical to the people who surround me. This contradiction, even if by mere mention of labels (Hi, I'm a bit of an atheist), by its very essence is seen as aggression. There is no quicker way to make yourself an outsider than to mention an antithetical position on anything, but especially core beliefs (politics, religion, peanut butter, smooth or crunchy).
What bugs teach me best is that life is ephemeral and fleeting, sometimes strange and creepy, but very diverse. We may continue on beyond our life, but if we do bugs do too. Like many things, intelligence is a continuum. Hopefully life is too.
I am still learning to share my love for a bug, and for things which bug. Sometimes being bugged is best to move you from your comfortable position toward something new and different, but other times, should it prove too persistent, or its presence too annoying or intolerable, the bug gets it hard.
I'll say hello to the chickens for you. :)
