I feel really terrible when I kill a bug or a mosquito, yet
not bad enough to not kill it, sometimes even if I can avoid it. Killing a
mosquito knowing I don’t want to and knowing that I can avoid it makes me sad.
It is a reminder of knowing better and not doing better. I have often done
that. The calendar I bought at the Japanese Morikami Museum, which has many
Buddhist sayings, told me last month that the “only real failure in life is to
not do what one knows best.”
And here the notion that ignorance is bliss can really be a
relieving one. Unless of course you believe that being ignorant is not “best”.
If ignorance isn’t the best, then it poses a burden upon all of us to not be
ignorant as much as possible. What happens then, when you truly find things to
be wrong, yet you deal with them because it is “impractical” to live otherwise.
Furthermore, you may know something is wrong, but the solution
to correct that wrong could either be impractical or nonexistent from your
perspective. I have noticed that people often have the perspective that, no
matter what little we do to correct it, the problem will still persist. So,
since we cannot completely eradicate the problem, why bother at all. Tragedy of
the commons.
I remember studying about Jainism four years ago, and
thinking how insane it sounds to not step out of the house for fear of killing
bugs. I remember explicitly laughing at the absurdity or the extent to which
Jains avoided killing animals, despite my respect for the sentiment.
I wanted to enjoy the
outdoors today, and came to sit outside at a Starbucks, while doing work. I
seriously considered going back home because there are bugs here. And it is not
because they are bugging me and running away. No, it is a weird species of
mosquito/fly, swarms of which, earlier today also tortured me as I tried to
enjoy my walk to class. To avoid killing them, I had resorted to taking a longer
route to school then, and now, I have resorted to change my location, because
it is just extremely cold inside. I felt noble, yet irritated.
So, these bugs are not bugging me and running away. Instead,
they are slow, and as I try to shoo them away from my newly waxed legs, they die
instantly. This freaked me out even more. I know I am a big girl, and have
heavy hands, but even my lightest wave of hand is killing these bugs instantly.
This is more irksome and burdensome, for I know I have the power in the
slightest swivel of my finger tips. With great power comes great
responsibility.
When these little buggers do not care for their own
survival, then why should I care for them? Maybe nature meant for them to be
this way…. (As I speak, there is a pair of these on my laptop…I am letting them
crawl)…and maybe I am tempted to fling them away because that is what nature
has intended. Nonetheless, I also naturally don’t want to.
I think if these were bugs that were quick and agile, I
might not feel bad because I cannot easily kill all of them, and so the hit and
miss would be a bit more balanced. Instead, they are slowly walking around
asking to be killed, and I am spending energy figuring out how not to.
I remember being a young kid sitting in my balcony in India,
taking great pleasure in throwing water at a swarm of ants, when I had newly
discovered that ants were nothing to be scared of; they could easily be killed
by water. How can something be killed by water, I marveled, an easy killing
that I can exercise! I feel guilty about doing that now; I don’t go out of my
way seeking pleasure in killing them, yet I still have trouble tolerate them in
my space.
Honestly, these two love bugs are extremely beautiful –
doing some type of mating dance on my laptop. The thought of flinging them away
is a sad one, but for some reason, I don’t want them in my way either. I tried
to scroll my mouse on them to see if that would make them get out of my sight
for some time, until their inevitable death when I close my laptop.
If I focus so much of my energy on saving these bugs,
thinking about them, will I sacrifice the things in life that “really matter”.
Should I turn away from what I feel, what I think. Should I look for research
that will most likely make me feel better about flinging the bugs to death?
Wouldn’t that require more time and energy than just letting them crawl?
I will ignore them till I can.
I felt helpless when I felt that I could not look them up. Help was
provided just when I identified the need to know their name in order to
look them up. I remembered my roommate's happy banter one day about how
another friend of ours did not know that these mating bugs are called
love bugs. It hit me instantly - why that piece of conversation had
happened. Whether it happened for today or not, by using that piece of
information, I made it have purpose.
Aftermath of that day
I did not end up having to kill them. They did not die when I was careful to close my laptop a certain way. And I did end up looking them up. It turns out that there is a
rumor that these bugs were created at my very own university due to some
accident. Whether it is the truth or not, I felt even more responsible, for
their birth, their slow demeanor which impedes their natural survival. Perhaps
I was looking for a reason to not have to kill them, and found one. Now, how
practical will it be?
How many such decisions do we make, which are against what
our heart truly wants, simply because they are the practical decisions? What do
we do while we haven’t found the perfect solutions? Follow our hearts? I
realized that the world tends to reserve such sayings for greeting cards and
scrapbooks. There are some who truly understand how difficult that path
actually is. I respect them and look up to them, hoping to catch up with my
heart’s abilities one day. Except this cruel heart inches further and further,
challenging you to expand that heart even more. While this approach may bring
us closer to what our heart wants, what about the goals our minds had set in
for us? Will these goals require for us to kill our love bugs one by one?
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