BEES IN GLASSES

I’m not into apiary science (although it’s empowering to know the Latin word for beekeeping). But I read once in Anne Lamott’s book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, that if you’re out in the yard catching bees (and who of us doesn’t do that on a regular basis?), you don’t really need a lid for your bee-catching jar. On the other hand, if you’re catching butterflies or fireflies, you need to slap that ventilated lid on as fast as you can because butterflies and fireflies will definitely try to make a break for it if left unlidded.

Back to bees—Anne Lamott says, “ . . . you can keep bees in jars without lids, because they’ll walk around on the glass floor, imprisoned by the glass surrounding them, when all they’d have to do is look up and they could fly away. So . . . we’ll look up, we’ll get off our asses, or if we are like bees, off our glasses.”

I was thinking that this might be a good day to get off my glasses and get some things done. It’s time to stop looking through the old mayonnaise jar of my life, thinking about what I coulda, shoulda, woulda wanted to do today and blaming the glass for what I’m not accomplishing. It’s time to look up and see that big uncovered hole in the top of the jar and admit that the only thing between me and the blue sky today is my unwillingness to fly vertically as well as horizontally (especially since horizontal flight is so glass-smashingly painful).

Off I go—beefore I beegin to beelieve I really beelong inside this glass jar (good grief!).