Gnat Squish
Diana 
Morning commute with a tiny bug takes an unexpected turn for the worse... for us both.
I was driving to a destination in the nearby town where I live. My head was full of things: my itinerary for the day, a conversation I’d had with my friend earlier that morning, things I needed to remember to say to my husband about the plans for the weekend, a phone call that I needed to return later.
I almost forgot where I was going and I nearly passed the exit on the highway. “Be here now” was a distant mantra far from me that morning. At the end of the exit ramp I sat at the traffic light, waiting for the red to go green. Staring at the cars going by and off into the heavy clouds overhead on that gray morning in the Pacific Northwest, I noticed a tiny winged bug bouncing around in the inside of my windshield.
This little bug was close to the size of a spec of dust that you can sometimes get in your eye that you can feel and know is there but cannot find to wash it out. You know that size?
If it had not been frantically bouncing and flitting around on the glass I would have never noticed it. It was that small.
My first thought was, “Gosh! A tiny bug in the dead of winter?”
My second thought was, “Aw, it’s kind of cute.”
My third thought was, “I wonder if I should roll down my window and shoo it outside…”
My fourth thought was, “It’s so small I’d surely kill it if I tried that.”
My fifth thought was, “This little bug is becoming kind of distracting in my driver’s view. It’s right in front of my line of sight.”
Even though it was tiny, I knew it was there and I was steadily watching its movements.
My sixth thought happened after my reaction.
I reached up and swatted at the little bug with the back of my hand. I did it suddenly, haphazardly, and with zero forethought at all. My own action – or was it a reaction?-- kind of surprised me, as if someone else had suddenly joined me in my micro-irritation at the little jittery insect disrupting my view and my inner agenda review, and that something picked up my hand to take care of the annoyance for me.
I immediately looked close. Uh-oh… no more tiny bug.
My seventh thought was, “Did I just kill it?!”
My eighth thought was, “… why?”
I had an internal dialogue with myself as the light turned green and traffic proceeded forward. That bug wasn’t hurting anything, especially me. That bug had a right to be here as much as I do. I have never thought about the act of squishing a gnat so much as I did that morning.
“Something has changed in me,” was my ninth thought. A heightened awareness, maybe? A higher sensitivity to life and all forms within it, maybe? A greater depth of understanding that we are all a part of the one web, maybe?
I regretted killing it. I felt terrible about it. I mean, what a mean thing to do, for no good reason, yes?
I had initially believed that the little bug must be jumpy because it was frantic to leave the trappings of my car. But now my brain asked a new question: what maybe the bug was a little excited and happy to be hitching a joy ride with me and watching out of the windshield to see where we were headed? I felt worse.
As a result I vowed that morning in the car that I would try not to kill another innocent little bug just because it was somehow in my way. It did not even have a stinger or teeth big enough to bite me. What harm was it doing just being there in the space with me? Was it even my space? It was my car, but within my car was a shared space that we were occupying together.
I think something really has changed in me: my awareness of kindness. Feel free to disagree with me, but I attribute it to Diana Doodles Daily.
I spent time after the act pondering about the little bug, hoping that it dropped out of sight but is still living a life somewhere, though the odds of that are also quite small. Although I cannot be 100% certain, I must own the idea that I may have had a hand in its demise. And that sucks.
What I can be sure of is that I have never cared about a bug like that before. I don’t mind that now I am a person who does care. I don't think I’ll be so quick to repeat that action again. I think that little bug helped me to learn something new about who I prefer to be. I think I like the idea of a kinder world in all forms. Live, and let live. We all have a reason and a right to be here.
~ Diana
Categories: : Life Exploration