We’d just come off the wall ropes, folded forward and looked at our feet activating the metatarsal when a thin black bug scurried across the mat. She giggled, “Oh my.” I brushed him away gently and came back to her toes. So did he. “Persistent,” Alice commented. I scooped him up and carried him to the window.
The rains the night before had been spectacular. The first in months, full of lightning and thunder, electrical outages and over extended puddles. The trees swelled and glowed as the downpours washed away accumulated dust and grime. High winds closed the port and high puddles closed the roads. I loved it.
I started to open the screen to put the interloper on the ledge and justified saving him to my client. “These bugs bloom after the rain. They don’t last long. Sometimes only a day.” Curious, she followed me to the window.
“Oh dear,” she exclaimed. Hundreds of the same skinny black bugs were struggling to ascend from the saturated ground, awakened by the water and the electricity coursing through the soil.
“Amazing.”
“You’ll see them dead everywhere tomorrow. So each second of their lives is like a year of ours.”
We watched for a moment, awed by their numbers and their persistence in moving upward. I calculated: 24 hours, 60 minutes per hour, 60 seconds per minute. They live 86,400 seconds. Suddenly, I felt I had all the time in the world. Compared to these little guys, we do. So take a deep breath and be here, wherever you are. Take a second and notice what’s around you. Take another and breath into that moment.
I didn’t open the screen. Instead, I lowered my new friend to the sill on the inside, confident that if he wanted to he could slip through a crack to join his clan. Or he could practice his 86,400 seconds with us.