Some Life Lessons Nature Recently Taught Me

By Niggy

For learning valuable lessons for living, Nature can be a great coach. The other day, I was staring up at an empty beehive that clung to the branch of a big tree. It had been a site of great activity just a few months earlier, with a huge pack of honeybees busily buzzing around through much of the day. Their job there had now apparently finished, and so, their hive had been abandoned and was gradually disintegrating. This reminded me of the impermanence of everything in the world, including in our own life, too. Some people may think that just because they own a house, have a well-paid job and enjoy various comforts, they are ‘settled’, once and for all. But no, we aren’t ever as long as we are here, because some day or the other, circumstances might unsettle us out of our so-called settled existence, and even if they don’t, a day is bound to come when we’ll have to depart from this earthly plane. The sooner we accept the twin facts of uncertainty and impermanence the better it is for us.

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Ginger, Mickey and Softie are three cats that roam around in the neighbourhood where I presently stay. The trio are considered to be ‘strays’ simply because they aren’t not officially ‘owned’ by someone. I consider the first of them a wee bit special, though I know I oughtn’t to be partial. He arrives in the house whenever he wishes to and curls up on my bed, and even, sometimes, in the cupboard. The other two have to be content with being fed outside.

Ginger is a real free soul, loves his fancy packed cat food, craves attention and is just as happy to sleep in my room as he is under a car or atop a bike parked outside. Something I learned from him the other day is simply astounding: For a few days, Mickey would get inside the house when it was cold and wet and sleep in the dining space for a bit and later leave. Ginger wouldn’t be in the house at those times. He mightn’t have liked an ‘intruder’ entering ‘his space’. Later, though, perhaps he somehow got wind of my two-timing him by allowing Mickey in, after which I learnt an excellent lesson from something really naughty that he did. One night, he crept up onto my bed and then guess what happened? He relieved himself in the middle of my blanket, as if to say ‘Serves you right’! I had a tough time washing the blanket, and it took days of drying to get the stink out! Still, though, I admired Ginger for what might have been a straightforward way of telling me that I was wrong in favouring Mickey!

We humans are not always so straightforward. In many families, people nurse grudges, even hatred, in their hearts against each other for years and then suddenly one day, they burst out over a petty event that may have happened years before. See, in contrast, how Ginger handled our little ‘family’ row: He created no drama at all. Just one little action of his was enough to make me know that I dare not favour  another cat over him again!

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Some days ago, I found a beautiful and rather big feather lying around in the garden. It seemed to have once belonged to a kite. Could it have left it for me as a gift? As I write this, I wonder, “What is it that we’ll leave behind when we die?”  In this regard, here’s something I can learn from the kite’s beautiful feather that it left behind, as it were, for me: When I leave this earth forever, what I’d like to leave behind are beautiful memories.

These are some things that an empty beehive, a bunch of cats and a bird’s feather taught me recently, simple and valuable lessons that might help me float through life lightly till the end!