Lately as I have been struggling with work, health and having time for myself.  It seems that life throws things at you one after the other without space for a breathe.  Zen like calmness was eluding me while worrying thoughts criss crossed my mind like the way wheat grass stems are thrashed about in the winds.  Then I saw the spider.  The day before I had been admiring the beautiful silky web it had built, its delicate threads coming together in a perfect octagonal shape.  Now after a day of winds, the threads had become tangled up and the perfect shape was gone.

And yet, the spider wasn’t sitting around moaning about that its beautiful home was gone.  I thought about how humans do that all the time.  Yes, we don’t have the skills to built our houses and we have to employ others and pay them good money to do it.  But the tenacity of the spider was what inspired me.  And how much we humans can learn about patience, dealing with disasters and rebuilding our lives from lowly insects.  You can also learn about reuse and zero waste- the little spider hung her new built home from the remnants of the old web.  I don’t think I will ever look down on the so called ‘lower species’ any more- they seem higher than us humans most times.

PS- that book is fantastic if you want to learn about what amazing structures animals, and insects, and even one celled organisms can ‘build’ and how the instinct to create is part of our DNA that we share with all living things.