When worries hit, take a cue from the chickadee
Living now, in this world, we find plenty to worry about. We fret global affairs: wars and poverty, carbon dioxide. We fret smaller details: fender benders, Internet outages, a kid’s ball getting thrown through a window.
I plead guilty to both. Sometimes I don’t sleep, all wrapped up in attempting to navigate challenges faced on life’s uncertain path.
When insomnia strikes, I get up, pour a finger of cognac, sit in the dark and take comfort in knowing, outdoors, it’s a much different story.
Outdoors, human worries don’t matter to creatures intent on surviving the night. Nor do our gaffes, our improbable triumphs, our crimes against natural order.
In the face of all these, nature views us with total indifference. It’s the way it must be. Every creature out there is consumed with performing the role nature means it to play. There’s no time to let humans intrude.
As an example, I suggest chickadees. Each of them drives the same straight road through life; no left turns into cul- de- sacs where only confusion resides. Each one follows the same DNA path: finding food, choosing mates, singing just the same song, dying young, full of fight when they do.
While they do this, they don’t give a hoot what we’re doing. They’re not thinking about how we might cut down their forest, or build shiny windows they fly into, sometimes breaking their necks.
They simply carry on, each one like the next, perfectly built to survive in a two- acre world. If some falter, the wave just continues to roll.
We, on the other hand — yeesh — what a mash- up. We race hither and yon, taking this turn and that, making brilliant and terrible choices. We are Harvard and Yale. We are mentally crumbled. We live in penthouses and shacks. Our limitless potential can bring wealth or die nipped in the bud.
I often think what it would be like speaking chickadee language; living chickadee life on that straight DNA interstate. You wake up, you are hungry. You find seeds or a grub to ingest. You defend your small turf against rivals, then seek out a mate, dig a cavity nest, produce babies. When they fledge you defend them, never wavering from the objective.
As a bird banding assistant, I have held chickadees, felt their tiny hearts racing in the palm of my odd human hand. They want none of me, only to fly free again. Captured, indeed, but pecking hard at my knuckle, they stay true to their mission: live free and then die chickadee.
I channel my inner chickadee by stepping outside into nature. There, all my worries seem framed by a different perspective. They seem small, not so daunting. I sense what it feels like to be part of something timeless; something larger than human endeavor.
With luck, while I’m out there, sitting under an oak, a chickadee might call or sing. Feeling linked to its world, freed from human concern, I know that would sooth me for just a few short, precious minutes.