"Worry is a
misuse of imagination." - Dan Zadra
Gaining wisdom from a mosquito on a rainy day? That sounds
like a stretch, yet it happened to me today. I like listening to NPR and on
this rainy morning I heard a piece about how mosquitoes deal with raindrops, which
to them are like three ton comets pummeling them from the sky. Needless to say,
there's no mosquito umbrella big enough or strong enough to protect them from
that, so how do they survive a storm?
Well, according to a team of mechanical engineers at Georgia
Tech, mosquitoes don't dodge raindrops, they ride them. The researchers found
this out by firing jets of water at mosquitoes while filming them with
super-high-speed video cameras. What happens is the mosquito rides the raindrop
until the wind catches its wings, which act like tiny kites and pull the
mosquito off the raindrop and back into the wind; then away he or she flies. Apparently,
they do this over and over again until the storm ends, with each raindrop ride
lasting about 1,000th of a second.
One of the researchers, a man named David Hu, described it as "rather than resisting the
raindrop, they basically join together." How Zen is that, especially for a
mosquito? I don't know that much about being Zen, but I do know resistance is
never part of it.
This riding the rain business is not without risk, however.
If the raindrop is close to the ground when the mosquito hops on and the wind
doesn't catch its wings before the raindrop hits the ground, kersplat! Dead mosquito. Of
course, the mosquito doesn't know about this risk, so rainstorms must present a
series of thrilling rides for those nasty little pests. After all, unlike
people, bugs don't worry, right?
This notion of riding the rain rather than resisting it
appeals to me and got me thinking about my approach to life's rainstorms, both
literal and figurative. I am a worrier whose glass is always half empty. If I
were a mosquito, I'd be the only one in the whole swarm buzzing loudly and frantically
about how the sky is falling and we're all going to end up smashed on the
ground. And, in the process, I'd miss out on all of that lovely rain riding...not
much of a life approach for a mosquito or a person, really, when you think
about it.
Since I've always lived life on the gloomy side, I don't
give changing my approach much thought. Sure, I admire happy-go-lucky types and
people who dance in the rain, but I can't imagine being one. Not until
recently, when I started thinking it may be time to change my view.
Maybe it's age - it takes a lot of energy
to worry all the time; or maybe it's the beginning of wisdom (another symptom
of age.) Anyway, lately I've grown tired
of always looking on the dark side and have been consciously trying to focus,
instead, on the light. It turns out, this is easier to
do than I imagined it would be.
This notion of positive focus is not new. From Phillipians 4:8 ("Whatsoever things are true, honest, just,
pure, lovely or of good report; if there be any virtue, any praise, think on
these things") to Oprah and Dr. Phil, the power of positive thinking is a
known phenomenon. For some reason, it's just taken me my whole life to try it.
I find that if I empty my mind of the chatter and brain
brick-a-brack, breathe, focus, listen and feel, the good stuff just starts flooding in. And, I experience
things I never thought I'd spend much time feeling, like calm, contentment,
peace, happiness and optimism. (Doing something mindless and repetitive like
weeding, vacuuming, jogging or mowing helps, as it seems to keep my brain from
going back to tensed-up mode...) This all is a welcome change and so far, I'm
impressed with my progress.
Like all changes, this positive attitude thing involves one
or two steps forward, then a step or two back, but in general, it's getting
easier to focus on the bright side and worry less; and, it turns out, I don't
miss worrying at all.
This column appeared in the 6/6/12 edition of the Barrow Journal.
I took this photo of raindrops in our yard...sadly, there were no mosquitoes riding them.
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