Life flies by

 

A short tale about a fly I once met…

 

 

 

 

 

I went into the bathroom the other day, and as I closed the door, I realized a fly followed me in.  The fly buzzed around while I was doing my business, and I wondered where the fly came from and where it was going.  The fly buzzed around the room like it was on a search mission.  There was no pattern that I noticed, but it did cover lots of air space.  Swooping into corners and climbing and diving around the small room.  The fly started to buzz past me, close enough to invade my airspace, and I began to get annoyed, all the while I still wondered where the fly came from.  I was curious how it learned to fly around, not only the aptitude it required but also the confidence that the fly showed.  It seemed to own the place as it whizzed past me so defiantly, almost taunting me.  Its arrogant disregard for my primacy began to grab my attention, and I was determined to get the flying varmint.  So once my need to be in the bathroom was over, I left the room, closed the door to trap the independent flying insect, and got an appropriate swatting device.  A rolled-up old weekly magazine was perfect, and I entered the room like a hunter.  I was in for the kill.  The fly seemed unconcerned and circled the room in its random pattern, making it hard for me to pick a spot for the kill.  I stood there for a few minutes tracking the prey’s path and determining an appropriate spot to lower the boom, in this case, the rolled-up weekly rag!

I took a swing, but the fly was just too fast and agile, and the fly buzzed me as though to taunt me again. I waited until it came back around and, with a violent swing, hit the fly and knocked it to the ground.  It lay there on the dark gray porcelain floor, not smashed, just stunned, and I went over and, although feeling a little twinge of remorse, smashed the cover of the magazine to the floor.  As I cleaned up the mess, I still wondered where the fly had come from and thought about how its life was just so unattached to other flies since it was on its own, and how unattached it was to my life since I could so quickly take its life. Then, as I moved to the trashcan I realized that there were things on that fly that were probably still alive. The smaller molecular things that one could see only with a microscope, and I knew that even in the trash, they were still surviving. And then I began to think about the things in those things that were still alive, and then I wondered at what point in the succession of the next smallest things was it no longer something that we as humans would consider alive.  Was that at some level where it was just the chemistry of the thing, where it was no longer an “entity,” or did those chemicals have a life, and as they deduced to basic elements? Did they have a life?  You can probably see where this is going.  We can subdivide forever, past the atom, past the proton, past the quarks, and past the bosons.  All of that was part of a fly that was buzzing me with no regard for its safety and seemingly not concerned for its fate.  All that made up that fly was in its makeup, and I tried to end them.  

My thoughts then started me to wonder about how the things in my body have control over me; the viruses, the mitochondria, and the same things that made up the fly.   I wondered where I came from and how independent my existence.  I have friends and family, and I would be missed, unlike the fly, I would imagine, but I am no less or no more important than that fly.  I miss him now that I got him.