Lessons from the Bees

There are days that bring a sigh to the heart.  Day followed by day with no respite.  Too many souls feel growing despair within.  At such times it can be hard to remember the joy that will come in the future.  We need to cling to hope,

… that days as sweet as honey may once again return. 

‘Abdu’l-Bahá 

Life sends tests that can crush but perversely that makes good times that follow more joyous.  These highs and lows are both aspects of life’s landscape and give it depth.

Honey doesn't lose its sweetness because it is made by bees that sting. 

Matshona Dhliwayo

But when in the darkest valley of despair, it is hard to gain that perspective that change and recovery are already coming.

This deadly poison shall give way to purest honey, and this sore wound will at last receive a healing balm. 

‘Abdu’l-Bahá

What can help is the kindness and compassion of those near us. 

Kind words are like honey, sweet to the soul and healthy for the body. 

Proverbs 16:24

A degree of humility however is necessary in order to receive the help we sometimes need.

The world is plentiful with honey, but only the humble bee can collect it. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Progress can come at a surprising speed when there is a clear purpose to any day.

The sweetness of life lies in usefulness, like honey deep in the heart of a clover bloom. 

Laura Ingalls Wilder

In a materialistic world, the competition for resources can blind us to what actually uplifts the spirit.

The bee is more honoured than other animals, not because she labours, but because she labours for others. 

Saint John Chrysostom

To look around and feel truly alone is the very worst form of poverty.  

A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside. 

Winnie The Pooh 

In some ways, this life is about searching, like the bee, for that special flower but the ultimate aim of all such endeavours is love.

Life is the flower for which love is the honey. 

Victor Hugo

 During this search, the watchword is to do no harm, only good.

As a bee without harming the flower ... flies away, collecting only the honey, even so, should the sage wander in the village. 

Buddha

And this doing good has to become second nature, not a task done for reward or trophy.

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne. 

Marcus Aurelius 

Worker bees

Sandra’s favourite movie was a Robin Williams film, entitled “What Dreams may Come”.  It had been badly received by the critics at the time of its release and despite its sombre beauty never achieved acclaim.  Its subject matter was death and focussed on the suicide in particular.  Sandra’s husband, John, refused to watch the film with her.  He loved ‘the funnies’ as he called them.

“Movies should make you laugh, not cry!” He'd claimed. 

Sandra remembered the scene in the movie where her husband had dismissed the film and refused to watch any more.  Robin Williams and his wife had two children and in one tragic car accident both children were killed.  It was after that memorable scene John announced his preference for comedy and had retired to his workshop, beside the garage, to continue working on his beehives boxes.  Sandra sat alone, tissues at hand, sobbing while the film ran on.  Robin Williams dealt with the bereavement by mentally sealing the whole business up in a box and putting it away.  His wife could not bear the loss and had a complete mental breakdown ended only by her taking her own life.  Her husband John had stuck his head through the living room door and asked if she wanted a cup of tea.  Seeing her tear stained face he asked,

“Who else has died?”

When Sandra tried to explain, he interrupted her with,

“On second thoughts don't tell me, life is grim enough without fictional tragedies messing with my head.” He left to make the tea.

Sandra sat glued to the unfolding tale of sorrow alone.  When tea and biscuits arrived from the kitchen she'd thanked her husband and told him,

“Now Robin Williams has been killed while trying to help an injured person.”

John muttered,

“Let me get this straight.  Their only children are killed, and then his wife commits suicide.  Now, you tell me he’s dead!  Sandra why would anyone watch such a depressing film.  I'll tell you now; there'll be no happy ending to this one.  You’ll spend the whole evening crying into those tissues.”

With this ominous pronouncement John had retreated to his almost finished bee box.  Glowing in soft freshly sawn, sweet smelling wood he sanded the last remaining rough edges contentedly.

Sandra continued to watch the film caught up in its imagery and haunting beauty.  It touched her in ways she couldn't put into words.  In the film, Robin travels to hell to try and rescue his wife.  In this version of the afterlife, those who commit suicide go to a terrible part of hell.  In this place they forget all they love and even who they are.  He manages through his deep love to rescue her and the film ends with the whole family reunited in the next life.  After the traumatic film she joined John in the workshop needing a debriefing from the film.  John looked at her distraught face and asked,

“Why do you do it to yourself?”

Sandra tried to explain,

“It somehow touches my heart and makes me realise that life is much more than just this.”  She held her arms out to everything around them.

John continued to sand the edges of his box evenly and queried,

“Don’t you think suicide is an awfully depressing business to dwell on, never mind losing one’s kids?  I’d like to think life is much more than all that”,

Sandra nodded, “I know what you mean. It’s too close to home after Henry isn't it?”

She broke off, unsure where to go with the mention of John’s cousin.  John sighed,

“I'll never understand why he jumped, a lovely man, what a waste!”

Sandra stood closer and rubbed his shoulder.  John continued,

“If only he’d spoken to me about what was going on.  I never knew about the debt.  Losing his job must have been the last straw.  But why didn't he ask for help.  We all thought the world of him.  I’d have lent him some, we could have done something.”

Sandra pointed out,

“Most people hide the pain they carry, it’s the way they cope.  Do you know in our knitting circle last week every single person admitted they'd thought, at some stage in their life, of ending it!”

John was shocked, “Bloody hell!”

Sandra continued,

“Many said the reason they didn't was because there was someone or something that made the difference.  One lady said she felt like she was hanging off the edge of a waterfall and it seemed easier to just let go.  But her mother had got her through and that love had been her lifeline.  John coughed,

“Perhaps, I wasn't there enough for Henry.  We laughed a lot together and joked around.  But was there even an opportunity for him to tell me….” 

John shook his head and wiped his hand across his face, wiping the thoughts away.

“Henry loved your company, John.  He looked up to you, it wasn’t that.  His life was unravelling.”

John answered,

“You know Henry told me that around 8000,000 people commit suicide every year.  It was the time of the articles about the French Telecom building in Paris having had their 24th suicide in 18 months, do you remember?  There was a discussion in the pub and Henry had read a lot of stuff about it.  How could I have been so stupid not to see where he was going in his head?”  

He sadly shook his head from side to side.

Sandra responded,

“Perhaps life is more tenuous than we all like to think.  But you weren't to know.  I like to think most of us have lifelines that prevent us getting on those ledges.”

John asked, “Like what?”

Sandra sat beside him on the work stool and held his hand examining the calluses on his palms. 

“Lifelines like people we love, or have loved.  Moments of sweetness that make everything bearable.  Even the memory of your aunt Emma feels like a lifeline to me!”

John nodded,

“You're right she was special.  She used to have these huge family gatherings with roast lamb dinners around her big table.  I loved being with someone whose heart was that big.  Always a real privilege to be with her and learn to be a better person.  It was her kindness and gentleness that shaped the home.  It always felt a place of sanctuary, full of love.  She never forgot my birthday.  She really listened, I mean really listened, not just waited for a chance to speak about herself. ”

Sandra smiled and added,

“I can still smell her soda farls on the hob and taste her pancakes with honey!”

John squeezed her hand and said,

“You know worker bees do a lot more than just make honey. They keep the hive at exactly the right temperature. If it is too hot, they collect water and deposit it around the hive, then fan air through with their wings cooling it by evaporation. If it is too cold, they cluster together to generate body heat. They are the ones who gather the pollen, which feeds everyone else in the hive.  Without them there would be no crop pollination and almost all our own food supply is dependent on them. They keep us all alive in so many ways.  They clean, defend, and repair the hive. They feed the queen, and the drones.  When responsible for the larva they will check a single larva 1,300 times a day.  You know there are people who are like the worker bees and I reckon Aunt Emma was one of those. All of us are poorer and more vulnerable without them.” 

Sometimes we make shit happen

There are dates that really stick in the mind.  Take 1844, in that year the blight that decimated the potato crop in Ireland arrived and one million people would die as a result.  Such times deserve closer inspection because they often signal a sea change.  Just as for all of us there are years that we remember for all sorts of emotional/practical reasons.  Ask anyone and they can usually site their own year to remember, often for catastrophic reasons.  The year everything went pear shaped.  So, I was fascinated to read of the history of the Great Auk.  The original penguin was originally so numerous that Iceland and Newfoundland were packed with these flightless birds.  Then humans got stuck in and used them for meat and mattress stuffing as pointed out in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

“You do not give yourself the trouble of killing them, reported an English sailor, “but lay hold of one and pluck the best …. You then turn the poor penguins adrift, with his skin half naked and torn off to perish at his leisure.”

It was June 1844 when the last of this unfortunate species was strangled by Icelandic hunters.  A sorry end to a once abundant species.  Of course we’ve been here before.  The Dodo’s are portrayed almost as a humorous creature deserving of extinction.  If you are careless enough to forget how to fly – you really deserve everything that comes to you, seems to be the bottom line.

But even those who fly are being wiped out.  Last year the usual millions of monarch butterflies that return to the mountainous fir forests of central Mexico every year for the first time in living memory did not appear on the 1^st November as usual.  Traditionally the butterflies are thought to be the souls of the dead returned and Mexicans celebrate it as a holy Day ‘The Day of the Dead’.  In 2012 there was concern when only 60 million of the butterflies eventually turned up.  By the end of Nov 2013 only three million arrived.  The spectacular migration, many think, could be approaching collapse.

The causes are human ignorance.  We cannot blame Icelandic hunters or cruel mid nineteen century sailors.  No, it is due to the way we choose to farm, ploughing every scrap of earth, the use of Roundup a herbicide that kills virtually all plants except the genetically modified to survive it.  Millions of acres of native species, especially Milkweed have been wiped out.  In one study Iowa was shown to have lost 60% of its milkweed and then another study depressingly claimed 90% was actually gone.  We have sterilized our agriculture landscape.  So what I hear some ask?  Well, 80% of our food crops are pollinated by insects primarily bees.  They like butterflies are in trouble.  The intricate food web that connects life forms on this planet is being ripped apart.  The intricacies of interdependence that we are only beginning to understand and wonder at, is being destroyed at a frighteningly wanton rate.

Some Monarchs finding themselves parasite laden, turn to more toxic types of milkweed which helps kill their unwelcome guests.  Bees have long used resins from aspen and willow trees to line their nests and these anti fungal, anti-microbial and antiviral substances help them fight infection and diseases.  Such wonders of nature are being treated with cavalier indifference and ruthless expediency.  When you insist on a nice green lawn you’ve created an insect desert.  Have a front yard with a wildflower meadow and the same area can accommodate 20/30 species of bees and butterflies.

But unfortunately it doesn’t stop at flightless birds and insects.  By recent estimation one third of reef corals, one third of freshwater molluscs, one third of sharks, a fifth of all reptiles, a quarter of all mammals and a sixth of all birds will be like the Great Auk, extinct this century. 

The last great extinction (the fifth) happened 66 million years ago.  It has been entitled with no exaggeration ‘The worst day ever on planet Earth’ and three quarters of all known species were wiped out. 

However, in truth, an even worse extinction happened 252 million years ago when 96% of all marine species, 70% of all terrestrial vertebrates and the only mass extinction of insects ever to have occurred.  In fact, it took life on our planet 10 million years to recover.  Extinctions do happen, they may be many millenniums apart but they are a feature of our planet.  One 450 million years ago was due to the movement of the earth’s plates into the southern pole region which caused global cooling and mass extinction.  Another extinction was caused by a collision of an asteroid.  I suppose the accurate summary here is, shit happens. 

It is no comfort to note that present extinctions are not something that has happened to us by chance or fate but by our own hands.  I suppose the truthful summary here is – sometimes we make shit happen.