A Bee in the Jungle

The life of a bee

A bee flys around, leaving its hive. Perhaps at first the bee simply follows other bees, because it’s really not sure about where its going or what its duties might be. So, it follows a more mature bee that has experience finding the flowers nearby. In the lush jungle a bee might fly as far as three miles to find the perfect flower with enough pollen for it to bring back. It flys the same path, sometimes within only feet from its original outbound path from the hive and then goes into the hustle and bustle of the hive.

This is its world. The hive, the flower, the hive again.

A train bound for nowhere

So, here I sit, a man on a train bound for NYC, another jungle as it were – made of concrete and steel. As my train flys by towns at 100-120 mph, I watch people – people who have no idea they are being viewed and thought about, people going about their daily routine. There is a group of men pouring a concrete platform to mount dairy processing equipment on for a local ice cream manufacturer. Just down the street from them, two  children are walking to school. Another block down the tracks is an old building being demolished to make way for a new building or perhaps nothing more than a parking lot.

Everyone has his own little task in his own micro-universe, going about his own life in a tiny little piece of the world.

The macro lens

So what makes us function as a world, as a society? Is it the fact that some of us step out of that little universe we live in and reach out to others? Is it because, although we exist on a tiny level, we can still see beyond the small at the whole of society and the world around us? Perhaps it is those who cannot see the bigger picture, cannot mentally step outside of the their hamster wheel, that cause our nearsightedness at times.

Believe me, I’m not an “all we are saying is give peace a chance” preacher. Far from it . . . we are what we are. I would like to believe that there is a greater good that we are all reaching for, something that will make the world better for all of us. But we can’t change the true nature of what we are. We might be capable of horrifically heinous acts of violence and terrible things on a global scale, but what is amazing about the human race is that we are also capable of incredible and amazing acts of love, beauty and enrichment.

It’s what you choose to look at – stepping off your path outside the hive and flying to the flower that makes you a better person – and ultimately, makes the world a better place.