The Bug on the Windscreen

 ©Lyn Murphy 2011

There was a bug on the windscreen of the car.

We had stopped, during our Sunday drive in the countryside, to have a look at a quaint little knick-knack shop. As we pulled back into the traffic on the Highway, we spotted the bug on the driver’s side of the windscreen.

Don’t ask me what kind of bug he was. He was orange and black, with an angular body and long, stick-thin legs. Right then, those stick-thin legs quivered with the effort of hanging on to the windscreen as the momentum of the car increased the flow of air around him.

We expected he would soon lose his grip and fly off – back to his home patch. But, instead, he hung on for grim death and he stayed hanging on for at least another ten kilometres or so, until he suddenly disappeared during the brief moment when our attention was diverted elsewhere.

 Now ten kilometres for us, when travelled in a car, is hardly any distance at all. But, to a little orange and black bug with stick-thin legs – it could well be like being transported to another planet. I guess it didn’t occur to him that every minute spent clinging to that slippery glass windscreen was taking him further and further away from everything familiar to him. From his family (do bugs live in family groups?) and from his major food source (whatever that might be).

All he had to do was let go. Yet he stayed there, clinging on with every ounce of his strength, until he simply couldn’t hold on any longer.

I doubt that bugs have the ability to reason. Whatever his reason for continuing to enduring the G-forces of travelling on the windscreen of our car – I’m sure it was all to do with an instinctual fear of the unknown.

It’s the same kind of fear that keeps us clinging on to things that are really of no benefit to us either. And we do, don’t we? We cling on to hurts and grievances from the past, to wrong attitudes and unfounded, unrealistic fears and anxieties. We hang on with the same grim determination of the bug on the windscreen – even though every second that we continue on this journey is often taking us further and further down the road to our own destruction.

We hang on because we don’t know how to let go, or what will happen when we do. We most certainly have the ability to reason that this kind of behaviour is not good for us, and yet our fear often outweighs our common-sense.

Now I could have told that bug ‘If you let go now, before the car picks up speed, you will be able to flap your wings and escape the drag of the car.’ See I was able to see things from a much different perspective than the little bug. And sometimes we need to seek out people who can help us too – people who can see the bigger picture and advise us accordingly.

© Lyn Murphy 2011

Sunday Reflections

It’s been a difficult week.

For starters my new whizz-bang weight loss plan just stopped working. All those shed kilos were suddenly hopping right back on again – but why? I was eating the same food – doing the same exercise?

My long time back and neck problems kicked in with vengeance – which necessitated taking pain killers just to get through the work day. The pain killers in turn created their own rather nasty problems, which we won’t go into in any detail.

My hair, which I am currently growing out of a very short cut and into a Bob, took this opportunity develop a stubborn resistance to anything that could be remotely called a style. I tried Mousse, I tried wax – I tried all sorts of products with names like Fudge and Muk – and all I achieved was hair that now looked oily and dirty as well as very untidy.

I had a few major melt-downs and strongly considered giving up on this whole healthy-living, medication-free lifestyle. My poor husband was probably considering substituting my morning Vitamin pills with my Anxiety medication.

Then, today, we went for a drive up into the hills. As we travelled up a very steep incline I caught a glimpse of a chaotic tangle of vegetation eking out an existence right where the hillside plunged down to the valley floor.

There they were – an assortment of trees, vines and other vegetation – all clinging to this impossibly steep hillside. Each day they would struggle to find enough water, as the rainfall would quickly drain away from their questing roots. They would battle against soil erosion – choking in the exhaust fumes from the cars on the roadway.

Yet that patch of vegetation overlooked a glorious panorama – purple-hazed mountains in the background – deeply forested hills bordering a rich green valley, with splashes of rich purple, from the Bougainvillea, and fiery red from the Flame Trees.

I guess trees and vines and bushes do not have the ability to revel in the beauty of their surroundings.  For them it is all about the constant struggle for survival. But it doesn't have to be that way for me.

 I felt rather silly when I thought how I had just spent a whole week totally focussed on my weight and my hair and a bit of pain and discomfort. Frustrating though they may be - these things are not matters of survival and they certainly shouldn't blind me to all the beauty and all the good things in the world around me.

Actually, this morning (before we even went for our drive) I discovered the weight loss had started again. And I also got the scissors and trimmed up my fringe, abandoning the idea of wearing it swept across to one side. Amazingly enough just that little trim up made the hair much more manageable.

And now, after my little lesson from the hillside vegetation, I’m ready to face a new week in a much better frame of mind.

©Lyn Murphy 2011