Three Friends and Three Monsters
Once upon a time there were three friends: a bee, a spider, a mosquito. The bee loved flower nectar, the spider loved flies, and the mosquito enjoyed humans! They were friends by virtue of routes: after the bee sipped nectar and as she flew to her hive, she always buzzed hello to spider, who had a large web between the hive’s tree, and the next. Once hovering to enter the hive, the sound of mosquito could be heard as she lived in the very same tree, and bee acknowledged her too, as she was always in a hurry, scouting. As bee returned home at sunset, mosquito was just leaving, and so they passed as ships in the night.
Bee’s family was waiting, and she did have dinner – her husband was caretaking the children and since she’d done her share for the day, the allotted nutrition awaited them and all was well. The bee family was quite contented, indeed. They had a nice apartment in the hive, and so settled in well for the night.
Spider lived on her own. She was solitary but did her share in the natural order of things. She liked seeing the bee and the mosquito too, although she might have had them for dinner, but a being did need to have friends. She waited and kept the area quite clean so the hive had a good environment and she had a nice life too. Spider did venture along on a regular basis, because she was curious and liked to investigate the surroundings.
Mosquito was eager to find someone – someone, anyone, and usually he did: dusk. People enjoyed walking at night and off he’d go, following along, watching out for bats, get his bite, and run along back to the tree, not far from the water, where his kind bred. He zzz’d good night to spider each night, and so it was, in a tree, not far from the neighborhood of that neighborhood.
This routine began in the springtime, and quite a bit of time had passed, and each one looked forward to the buzz, or the zzz, or the nod of the day; it anchored them. Each knew in his heart though, that monsters were out there, and regardless of that, they each knew they must venture forth each day as that was the nature of things, and so they did, hoping no monster would show itself on the day’s path.
Bee was busy drinking nectar when he heard a loud buzzing noise; she knew it wasn’t her kind, but found it annoying. Carelessly, she flew toward the buzz to investigate and flying straight for the noise, she sited it too late, it was the monster: a tall, dark, heavy breathing pillar with a swatter whose head was a snake, and four bony legs standing up from the body rather than down. The monster swatted harshly and knocked bee to the ground and before she could regain her senses, all went black, right after she saw a large oval-shaped hammer come toward her. And there, all ended for bee. But, not for her husband and baby bee, nor spider, nor mosquito, nor pollination, nor honey, nor the hive, nor nature, nor the cycles of life, but it happened, that day, and that was it.
Spider wondered why bee hadn’t returned, and so set out, using her 8 legs fearlessly, plodding through the grassy terrain, and arriving soon to wood. Wood! It’s warm, and she enjoyed it. She decided to rest a bit, and just like her, she began a web, and settled in to wait for food. She felt vibrations in the wood, and forgetting how important it was to hide in the cracks to investigate, she scurried up the wood to look. She heard a frightful scream, and then, too late, she saw the monster, oh dear, could she outrun it, it was a large oval, on a long pulsating stick, thick with hair sticking out everywhere. The scream again reverberated her ears and eyes and legs and she became disoriented just for a second, and as she looked up, it was then the large oval was coming down, and all was black…
As mosquito zzz’d en route home, he looked down and saw that spider was gone; pity he thought, but then felt just a tad peckish, and decided to return to the neighborhood, just a minute away and take one nip for the night, and he almost did but just zzz nearby to see what was possible. He then heard a gigantic scream, and looked up to see the monster, the one with the snake head and four legs sticking up, it was descending upon him so fast, so quickly, but full with her meal from a short time ago, his wings were slow and then, all was dark…
And, so, the moral of the story is, without the bee, there is a glitch in the nature of things; without the spider, it’s gossamer webs become lost to the wind, and we are overrun with too much of something; without the mosquito, well…
Life. How easy would it be, to let it live?
Think. We are the same: in one short moment, all is lost: it is devastating. How do we know that the very, exact same thing, isn’t exactly true for every single living thing? We don’t.
But. If we think logically, it might just make sense, that we should never ever kill because we are afraid. We might defend ourselves against a mosquito because of disease, but, when something is not bothering you, why bother it?
I’m not a Buddhist, but I appreciate their threads. Life is to be respected, on all accounts. Yet, it requires training of oneself to be sure, we will kill anything so quickly because it’s ‘there’ and that’s even when it poses no harm at all.
Just a thought…
lindasochajaworskiswords 