Last week, one of my friends (a former student from my nature photography course) posted the following note on her Facebook page, along with some gloriously detailed shots that she took of a few bugs buzzing around her garden:
It is totally Joy Sussman's fault that instead of saying, "Eewww, a bug!" I now say, "Oooooo, a bug!" and grab my phone to take a picture!
And I felt so...proud.
Proud because I don't think it's in our collective human nature to be excited (in the happy way) when we see a bug enter "our" space. Often, our first impulse is to squash it. (Or to let out a panicked scream for somebody else to squash it.)
And yet, I had transmitted my fascination with bugs to my friend. (Score!)
It's a long and slippery slope, getting to that rare spot where we're actually happy to see a bug. (I'm not talking about mosquitoes or ticks, for the obvious reason that they suck. Literally.)
But when you squelch the desire to squash a bug, and study it instead, you see that it's just a little critter going about its daily business of trying to make ends meet.
Quite a few years ago, I lamented to my husband that some anonymous critter was digging holes in our garden. He said something that I'll always remember: "It's just a little creature, trying to make its way in the world."
I still love that. Widening our perspective to see that the vast majority of wild creatures, great and small, are not "doing things to us." They're doing things for themselves--or for their babies, or for their critter communities. They're simply living their lives in this world.
Sometimes, I actually set out to look for bugs, like an archaeologist on a dig. And I feel more than a little thrill when I finally find one, like a paleontologist uncovering a fossil.
On a deeper level (because I love to dig deeper, don't you?), I'd also say that photographing bugs helps me to become more like the type of person I'm striving to be:
More curious.
More patient.
More mindful.
More compassionate.
That's a tall order for little bugs. And yet, they fill it for me every time I pick up a macro lens.
So, yes, I'm happy--not sorry at all--that my bug mania is contagious.
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