Yesterday, I was sitting outside on a bench, enjoying the sunshine. The cool breeze blowing through my hair felt refreshing after days of triple-digit heat. I was doing my best to read mail I had received in the post, but a persistent bee kept attacking the small toes on my right foot.
I kicked the bee away, once, twice. After the second attempt kicking at the air, I felt the stinger just beginning to pierce through the skin of the toe. "Ouch!" I screamed. Giving up all sense of Rights To Ownership, I admitted defeat to my winged adversary, and I ran inside as quickly as a bruised ego would allow.
In my suite of rooms, nursing the injured toe, I tried to see the story from the bee's perspective.
The flowering trees and wildflowers were bursting with pollen. I remembered my itchy eyes and throat at the time---and the sneezing! But, I had ignored the pollen, so insistent had I been to claim my space on the bench.
"This is my bench!" I all but roared.
The worker bee had been doing its best to collect pollen, minding its own business, that is, until an invading giant happened to come along. It was I who had been the intruder, interloper, aggressor. I had desired to claim a space not wholly my own.
Bees don't attack unless they themselves feel attacked. If I had chosen to co-exist in peace with my busy neighbor, how much happier we both could have been.
I chuckled, as I soaked my foot in soothing water.
My thoughts kept going back to the incident at the bench. Like bees, we humans each have a specific role to play for the good of the community. Each of us has a unique purpose.
Success or failure in our lives, like that of the humble bee, is measured in degrees to which we are at one with that purpose.
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