Finding Calm in Calamity

Every beginning has an end. I am reminded of this yearly as I witness Ohio’s seasonal transitions, most notably in the fall. The temperature cools while the tree canopies gradually ignite with a fiery display of warm colors, before relinquishing their leaves to the wind. Many birds flee with the falling leaves in pursuit of fairer weather. It is a period of preparation for the impending winter, and reflection on days elapsed.

Loss is a facilitator of gratitude. When green and lively landscapes are replaced by drab and dormant ones, we are suddenly very appreciative of summer. When we stand sweating in the blistering heat, we covet the brisk winter breeze. There are countless examples of this phenomenon. The balance these contrasts provide, much like the yin and yang, are what give life meaning.

Each day brings losses of unpredictable magnitudes. Some we are responsible for; others are beyond our control. Some affect us directly; others are worldly troubles. It would be impossible and unhealthy to mourn them all, so we rank them in order of severity. Minor losses are acknowledged then written off, while substantial ones weigh heavily on our minds and hearts, sitting there and taking up space until the day we stand up and show them the exit.

A negligible loss might become considerable when quantity is increased; the robbery of one thousand dollars is more upsetting than the theft of one. Collective losses are not so easily dismissed, they knock loudly on the doors of the mind and heart.

Late one evening, while ambling down a country road, I spotted a delicate pair of wings jutting out from the asphalt like icebergs from the sea. As I got closer, I realized they were affixed to the flattened body of a praying mantis. I felt a tinge of loss in that moment, eyeing this stately specimen that had been reduced to rubble. Succumbing to an odd impulse, I snapped a few photographs of the mangled mantis, as if by doing so I was giving it a proper burial.

A little further down, I saw another splotch of darkness on the pavement. These discoveries continued until I counted a total of six miniature crime scenes dotting the short stretch of asphalt. The recognizable victims included another praying mantis, a caterpillar, a cricket, and a large grasshopper. That tinge of loss I felt earlier was amplified with each additional death. The several squashed insects seemed to come back to life in a swarm inside my skull, frantically kicking up thoughts.

Stomach-down in the middle of the road, making a conscious effort not to get squashed myself, I proceeded to photograph a few of the dismembered insects while simultaneously dissecting my thoughts. I felt as though I was taking pictures of snowflakes, every exoskeleton uniquely crushed by traffic. The orderly chevron pattern on the leg of a grasshopper stood out among the messy backdrop of oozing hemolymph, the color of gold, and just as valuable to arthropods.

I imagined myself as that grasshopper. On a voyage from one grassy ditch to another, a sprawling asphalt desert between the two. Perhaps still chewing on some ragweed, I launched myself, twenty-times the length of my body, into the air and onto the warm road. The sensory organs on my legs detected the vibrations from the oncoming car a little too late.

Each insect’s journey was thwarted by that of a human’s. One day that human’s journey too will end by some great unknown force, as every life must. Headed home, I pondered one melancholy matter after the other: declining insect populations, the negative effects of automobiles, unjust mortalities. How humans are involved with and afflicted by these and other tribulations, many without a straightforward solution.

Yet I walked away from that encounter with squashed bugs feeling a renewed respect for life. The fact that life exists at all is incredible enough for me. Fearfully anticipating loss, or trying to reason with it, only makes us bitter. Sometimes acceptance is the best answer. Before shutting my front porch door, I took one last breath of invigorating autumn air and remembered- every loss has a lesson.