Today my life seems the opposite of my apartment, clean and organized. I love the feeling of being on top of things at work (if that is ever possible), knowing who I am and what I want out of graduate school, excited for the possibilities that life is opening up for Ektor and me, and less than 24 hours away from being back in NY with Ektor by my side. These are days that I cherish.
But, there is always a but...something about today has also bothered me.
Upon walking into work today, dreaming away inside my own thoughts, I noticed a bee hive raging with bees protecting their home. What did I do? ran the other way and found a guard to inform him that those bees and the home they will die for needs to be removed. But as I walked by again, this time 5 feet further away, I thought really hard about the decision I had made. While I justify my decision to myself with a reminder that some people are allergic to bees and I possibly could have prevented a very unfortunate scenario for another human, I also cant help but feel guilty. Why is it that humans and animals (that includes insects!) can not live in harmony?
It reminds me of a tshirt I have supporting a cause I believe in whole-heartedly. And to avoid a REALLY long blog I will let you read that story here but I will summerize by saying a few selfish asshole people couldnt stand the idea of every inch of the beach not be accessible to them and therefore tried to kick out a seasonal pod of breeding seals leaving them homeless and facing an almost certain death. You can tell by the tone of my summery how I feel about the situation. And even though this is a case of annoying, pain-causing bees and not cute seals, this is still an issue of (hu)mans' seperation further from nature. Do you think that the bees really want to bother you as you walk by? No, they are just protecting their home, species, and offspring as we can hardly argue against since we engage in war for issues similar (or issues even less upsetting). Do you think they want to plant the most precious things in their life close to where you walk to work or school everyday? No, they just want a nice tree in a shady spot so they can carry out what they do. But the way humans deal with a bee hive is by doing exactly what I did, calling to have it exterminated.
But for what reasons? I think instead of talking about the harmful effects of bees on our lives, lets talk about what is the cause of them insisting their way into our lives. Its simple, we have an overpopulated planet, think flowers are pretty, import them into our yards for asthetically pleasing reasons, get bees who do what bees do best...pollinate and make honey...and decide that WE can live here but THEY can not.
Its really very sad right if you look at it from that reason?
So I went about my day without a thought for what was happening outside, but a few hours later I walked out to retrace my footsteps to the car and noticed the hive gone like it had never existed. On the sidewalk lay a few struggling bees trying to fight through the pains of chemical poisoning and decided, although I strictly beleive in not talking a life, to end their misery for them quickly by stepping on them. Call me too compassionate, but I actually apologized to each of the bees I had to do this to which was about 10. I am not God, and do not pretend to have the authority to play it for something or someone else.
It seems that in a life full of such pleasures and pains, we could learn to love a little more and share a little more compassion with all of the creatures we share this earth with.

And just to let all my readers know, we actually have people who manually pollinate soil because we as humans love flowers and plants that feed us, but dont like the bees that allow them to spread and grow. Oh and just to point out, honeybees are the most important insect to the human food chain. They are the principle pollinators of hundreds of fruits, vegetables, flowers and nuts. Read more about the honeybee crisis here. Maybe just maybe, we can all live in harmony...someday.