A Symphony of Science

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Brahminy Blind Snake Reflections

We found this remarkable little creature on the floor of our shower this morning.  First we wondered what an earthworm was doing there. Then, upon reflection, we decided it behaved more like a snake, in which case the question then became, "What is a tiny snake doing in our shower?"

A quick Internet search revealed that it's a Brahminy Blind Snake , an Asian import also sometimes called the "flower pot snake."  We have no idea how it got in the house, as we've brought no flower pots in lately, but it's apparently a little soil burrower who helpfully dines on eggs, larvae and pupae of ants and termites for a living. 

The Florida Museum of Natural History information page about the snake says it's found in "in isolated populations near Fort Myers and in Pinellas County and in Gainesville."  They can now add "Hillsborough County."


It was a plucky little thing, feeling its way cleanly around the quarter I placed near it for perspective,  wriggling with purpose and determination in its temporarily circular universe at the bottom of a paper cup where we deposited it for convenience's sake.  


But the most remarkable thing about it to my mind, is that all individuals of this tiny sightless race of snakes are females. The Brahminy Blind Snake reproduces unisexually, like the whiptail lizards, and several species of amphibians and fish. 


You never know what you're going to see when you get up each morning, but gaining the acquaintance of a member of a completely autonomous, self-sufficient, sightless race of female reptiles was certainly a whimsical and edifying gift!

Road Zen

With my teenaged son now learning to drive, and my daughters only driving for a couple of short years, I find myself revisiting the previously routine act of driving.

Once, in the Buddhist discussion group to which I belong, a visiting Sri Lankan monk advised us of a neat little trick of mindfulness on the road.

“Red lights,” he told us” are the perfect places to meditate.”

We must have looked dubious at best, imagining zoned out drivers awakened by a cacophony of horns the second the light turns greens.

But he clarified. He meant we should be mindful at the red light, looking about and noticing other drivers, pedestrians, shops and houses, the elements of the moment when we come to a stop. And mindful of when the light turns green and we can proceed again, still ever mindful.

He extended the metaphor to other moments in our lives that are perhaps confrontational or confusing.

“These are red lights in our lives,” he said. “Just stop, breathe, notice and proceed only when the light turns green.”

The monk’s words have made an enormous impact on my daily life, on the road and off. But the difference on the road has been the most impressive and, I hope, the most enduring to my newly fledged drivers.

Among other things, I’ve adopted the habit of driving 3-5 mph. below the speed limit, wherever that’s reasonable (which is actually most places). The speed limit is, after all, just that – a limit of speed not to be exceeded, not the limit at which I must always drive. Driving just below the speed limit has both raised my gas mileage and lowered my blood pressure.

I have this little computerized monitoring device in my car that gives me a read out of the average mpg of my car. It’s become a vehicular biofeedback device. In angling for the high score, my overall sense of calmness and well being commensurately increase.

It does seem to have an opposite affect on other drivers, though, as the more closely I adhere to the speed limit, the more frenzied my co-drivers become, crossing double yellow lines, passing on curves, and flashing their lights to impress upon me their sense of urgency. And they leave me remembering and ashamed in the dust of their passing for having felt the same impatience in the past, at others who were the driver I’ve become.

Where, I wonder now, had I been in such a hurry to go? I’m getting to places on time easily now, earlier in fact, as my measured driving agrees with timed street lights and gives me more time to make informed driving decisions. It’s as if, by pressing less urgently on the fabric of time (and the accelerator), I pass through the world more easily, with less resistance.

I’ve heard the argument that “slow drivers” – essentially anyone not exceeding the speed limit or otherwise “keeping up with traffic” – cause accidents. But I don’t buy that argument and God forbid should my children. People for whom other people don’t matter cause accidents; people like those passing me on double yellow lines, speeding, and impatiently darting in and out of traffic cause accidents.

We raise our children to resist peer pressure to smoke, drink or use drugs, and then we dare to suggest that they accept peer pressure from other drivers because everyone else is in a hurry?

I don’t think so.

I hope my daughters carry their self awareness and independent mindfulness with them on the road always, and that my son will as well, and that no amount of pressure from impatient strangers will compel them to do other than their conscience and sense of safety and well being dictate.

If you find yourself behind a driver doing the speed limit, or even a little less, especially a youthful looking girl with a pony tail, or a tall skinny boy with tousled hair think twice before you hit the horn.

If you’re in a hurry, pass at your own risk. But remember that every decision you make on the road involves others, and my children's lives are also in your hands, no matter how late you are or how important you feel. Whatever you do, make it your choice though, and don’t insist that other drivers cater to your impatience.

Consider that leisurely drive an opportunity to reflect on and truly appreciate, being alive, and helping keep others alive, too.

My family and I thank you.

What Can Green Do For You?

by Theresa Willingham

2007

Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,

For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.

America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,

And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.

~George Carlin

The late comedian, George Carlin’s, ode to our planetary offenses is uncomfortably, oddly, deeply humorous. He had a way of doing that, making you guffaw at the gaffes of humanity, while pointedly making you take stock. Still and all, it might seem faintly, perhaps outright, sacrilegious to even suggest laughing about the dire polluted straits we’re in. With gas speeding towards $4 a gallon, a looming world hunger crisis and melting polar ice caps, the future just ain't what it used to be .

But like Kurt Vonnegut said, ‘Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”

And since we’re essentially talking about “cleaning up” and the frustration and exhaustion that occurs when we don’t, we might as well have a good, thought-provoking laugh while there’s still enough oxygen in the air for us to do so without keeling over.

Environmentalists, though, don’t really care lick about the planet, says Carlin in his famous shtick, The Planet is Fine. They’re just interested in one thing.

“A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me,” he declares.

Carlin may be right about our narrow self-interests, enlightened or otherwise. We are definitely going to be personally inconvenienced with respect to our own habitat, and it’s definitely in our best interests to do something about it sooner, rather than later.

We often talk about saving panda habitat, and black bear habitat, and whooping crane habitat. But really, when you think about it, what about our habitat? Animal species all need specific things in order to live – like water, shelter, and, of course, air to breathe.

We’re no different.

Although no less an authority than Lee Iacocca once said, "We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?"

That’s a good question.

In Living Energies: Viktor Schauberger's Brilliant Work with Natural Energy Explained (Gateway; 3Rev Ed edition (1 Sep 2001)), author Callum Coats puts clean air in fresh perspective with a look at the work of Schauberger, an Austrian forester,scientist and inventor, and Schauberger’s son, Walter.

“The amount of energy a human being requires for survival over one year is (about) 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh). According to Walter Schauberger's calculations a human being operates at the relatively insignificant energy level of an electric light bulb, namely 100 watts. (which gives new meaning to being “dim” witted) :

1,000kWh is also the average amount of energy received from the Sun annually per square metre of ground surface. Theoretically, therefore, all a human being needs to do is to stand on its square metre and obtain its energy from the Sun. Were it able to transmute this energy directly, then its annual energy requirement would be satisfied. This amount of energy,however, is associated with the consumption of 260kg of molecular oxygen (O2) per year, which is equal to (about 30 gr) of oxygen per hour. These are the amounts of energy and oxygen required by a human being for the maintenance of bodily functions, reproduction, creativity and intelligent thought for a whole year.”

Who knew, huh? But wait, there’s more…

“The average petrol consumption of a car with a 1.6 lit. engine, however, amounts to between 10-11 lit per 100km [about 23.5 MPG]. Walter Schauberger has calculated that to travel a distance of 1,000km requires an energy expenditure of 1,000 kWh. Therefore to highlight the ludicrous mechanical efficiency we have so far managed to achieve and of which we are apparently so proud, a car travelling 1,000km destructively consumes the same amount of energy in a few hours that a human being uses far more economically and productively in a whole year. The car, however, does not think, it does not reproduce, nor is it creative. It has none of these abilities. Equating 1,000km travelled with the annual activity of one human being produces a very poor energy relationship.”

A car’s lack of creativity is just part of the problem. The bigger problem is our oxygen trade-off says Coats.

“…To drive a car at 50km an hour (about 30 mph) requires 22.25kg of oxygen per hour, which is roughly 750 times the amount needed by a human being. Therefore as we drive happily along in our cars, we unknowingly take 750 oxygen-breathing slaves along with us. These slaves, however, do not breathe out nice, healthy carbon-dioxide and water as we do, but they spew out a noxious concoction of poisonous gases.”

And here’s the clincher:

“In a journey lasting eleven hours, all the oxygen required by one human being for one year has been consumed.”

With an estimated 450 million vehicles in use worldwide (2001 figure)., Coats does a little math and concludes that we’re driving our way to “an oxygen consumption equal to that of 337.5 million people, about (50X) the present world population.

“We are forced to admit, therefore, that the relationship between our technology and its use of energy is diametrically opposed to that of Nature.”

With apologies to Yogi Berra, we're lost but we're making good time. If we take shallow breaths we can probably hang on a little longer, but the limited oxygen intake is bound to take it’s toll sooner or later.

Maybe it already has. Carlin says it doesn’t matter because, he insists,“… there is nothing wrong with the planet. …The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are … in trouble. … Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. … We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun?”

He’s right, of course. In Chernobyl in Russia, wildlife has returned in surprising abundance to the 30 km “Exclusion Zone” around the damaged nuclear reactor (Despite Mutations, Chernobyl Wildlife Is Thriving) . There’s debate as to whether “thriving” is the right word for what’s happening there. The place is still, will always be, considered unsafe for human habitation. But they can’t keep animals out, and the animals seem to relish the complete absence of humans.

There are herds of Roe deer and Przewalski's horses; newly growing plants and trees; lynx, eagle owls and wild boar. Reproductive rates of the animals appear to be lower than normal, and there are genetic abnormalities like albinism. It’ll probably be years before anything will be known for sure, or we may never know.

But the point is, as Michael Crichton so graphically depicted in his novel, Jurassic Park: Nature finds a way.

Carlin concurs, “The planet has been through … all kinds of things worse than us. … earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles... hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet… isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!”

Former vice president Dan Quayle perhaps said it best when he observed, “"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."

Those impurities might even be making us fat reported Bruce Blumberg, a research professor at UC Irvine. Blumberg says the epidemic of American obesity might actually be due to low levels of toxic compounds he calls “obesogens.” Really! I couldn’t make that up if I tried.

He doesn’t really know how obesogens work but he says they might act as “ “endocrine disrupters” … blocking or perverting the operation of the hormones that govern …growth, reproduction, sexual development and behavior.”

If that’s not enough to make you recycle I just don’t know what is.

“ Pack your [stuff] folks,” says Carlin. “ We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little Styrofoam. Maybe. …. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.”

Great works of literature and art notwithstanding, despite our relatively recent epiphany that the sun does not, in fact, revolve around us, but we around it, the best we can do, under really good conditions, is to hang on by the skin of our teeth for about 80 years, if we’re lucky. Most of us won’t make it anywhere near that long.

Like George Carlin says, “The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed – Remember Chernobyl -- and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, "the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic.

"The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us.

"Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?"

"Plastic...."

It wouldn’t be the first time the Earth has used us. As soon as we hit the water in Viking ships, it started – probably before that, actually, when the first Mesopotamian forded the Tigris or Euphrates. We became the Earth’s first FedEx delivery system – carrying a virus, or a seed, or an insect or a rat from one place to another, setting in motion a part of evolution, and possibly our own demise, that hasn’t stopped yet.(And here we are – the biggest immigrants in the history of life on earth -- trying to figure out immigration policy. )

To be fair, though, says Carlin, the planet probably just sees us a mild threat.

We’re just “ Something to be dealt with,” he says. “ And the planet can defend itself in an organized, collective way, (like) a beehive or an ant colony…. A collective defense mechanism. The planet will think of something. What would you do if you were the planet? How would you defend yourself against this troublesome, pesky species? Let's see.... Viruses might be good. They seem vulnerable to viruses.”

War of the Worlds comes to mind. Written by HG Wells over 100 years ago, it tells the story of an alien invasion complete with imported invasive exotics – the red weeds that take over the landscape – and how the aliens succumb to Earthly pathogenic bacteria. It's like déjà vu all over again. Maybe the story is actually a self-portrait.

So what can Green do for You, FedEx people of the Earth? It’s doing it for you right now, right here, with every breath you take – this Green Earth, what’s left of it, is keeping you alive. We are, part and parcel, the stuff of the earth, as much the pathogens we fill it with as the life-sustaining elements with which we’re born.

As Charles Haas said, “Give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day. But teach a man how to fish, and he'll be dead of mercury poisoning inside of three years.”

So doesn’t it just make sense to put into the Earth what we want out of it?

Life?

You’ve heard, ad nauseam, all the things you can do and you know all the reasons why you should do it. But have you heard it so much, on the TV from the comfort of your 5-star energy efficient air conditioned living room or on the radio of your lightweight, high mileage compact car, or read it in the paper you’re going to recycle, over your fresh brewed cup of fair trade coffee that environmentalism has become just another passive social good, like giving your old clothes to

Goodwill?

Replace a few light bulbs with CFLs – carbon fluorescent bulbs -- turn the lights off when you leave the room, throw the empty bottle in the recycling bin and you’re good? Well, actually, you are. It’s wonderful that those things are becoming routine and ordinary ways of living.

But there’s more to it than that, and all completely within reach.

To be truly Green –to live in an environmentally conscious fashion – requires … well… living consciously. When we stand on our square meter of Earth, we need take no more than we require to live - our 29.659gr of oxygen, our 100 watts of light energy, some home cooked meals, a good book or two.

I know. That’s not completely practical in “today’s world”. You have to work to pay the bills; you need to drive to church to listen to great truths. But maybe more is practical than you think.

For instance, consume less and you need to earn less to sustain your consumption needs. Travel with friends instead of alone, or combine your errands, and you take a couple of cars off the road, and save a few thousand oxygen slaves. Do you really recycle as much as you can?

We’ve made the Earth’s plastic. Our days are numbered. What else can we give the Earth that makes us useful and necessary? How about more green – trees not lawns – and less pavement? How about more, and more free flowing, water? How about the healthy, manageable carbon dioxide of our exhalations as we walk and talk instead of the toxins we belch out from less natural forms of transportation and communications?

Living more simply, more cleanly and Greenly, also puts more Green in our wallets, the bottom line for a lot of us.

Drive 55 mph on the highway and you can improve your gas mileage by as much as 15%, and commensurately reduce your trips to the gas station. Save up to 3% in energy costs for every degree you set your AC above 72.

Of course, what we do with those extra savings is a consideration for intentional living, as well. Do we hit the mall and buy more stuff we don’t need? Eat out more? Or do we use the money to build a Victory garden? Do we increase our contributions to the church we love, to charities we cherish? Do we invest in renewable energy? Support fair trade organizations in an effort to live sustainably in a global economy?

Living Green is about more than recycling, turning out the lights and reducing our water use. It’s about living intentionally on our planet, on the same planet whose elements run through our life blood. Drive more slowly and you live more meaningfully, increase your chances of not dying on the highway, lower your blood pressure and see more of the world. Ride with friends instead of alone, and you enrich your life.

Turn off the AC and open the windows, now and again, and you let the world in along with the breeze. You can hear the birds, and the cicadas, the sounds of children outside. Turn off the your artificial lights and appreciate the natural light of dusk and dawn, and the subtle colors and shadows that accompany it. Line dry your clothes and enjoy the sweet scent of air dried fabric. Unplug your electronics, and connect with the world around you in deeply meaningful ways.

Whatever happens to Earth, happens to us. Except we’re less resilient, and have less time on our hands. Earth might stumble a bit, wobble on its axis maybe, but we’re just a hiccup on its timeline. If we want to enjoy our time here – spiritually, physically, economically -- then we need to stop spitting into our wind, trashing our own global living room, and treating our planet like a doormat. We’ve got the roles reversed. We need to remember who’s in charge, and it’s not us. It’s Nature.

What Can Green Do for You? It can keep you alive, and not just passively alive, but vitally alive. When we heal the earth,” says environmentalist David Orr “ we heal ourselves.

Carlin concludes, “ See I don't worry about the little things: bees, trees, whales, snails. I think we're part of a greater wisdom than we will ever understand. A higher order. Call it what you want. …It doesn't punish, it doesn't reward, it doesn't judge at all. It just is. And so are we. For a little while."

Like Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Let’s make that little while, worthwhile.

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Parenting Paradigm Shifts

By Theresa Willingham

Originally appeared in the St. Petersburg Times, 2006

At our best, we are dynamic beings, growing emotionally, intellectually and physically in cataclysmic bursts that can shake us to our very core. The very young and the very adolescent epitomize this internal seismic shifting through temper tantrums, risk taking, back talking, life seizing, adventure seeking actions and behavior that can leave those of us in the Middle Ages adrift and motion sick in a sea of angst.

At our worst, we are entrenched in the static habits and routines of our Middle Ages. We come to resist change like dental visits, and suffer the consequences of that reluctance like tooth decay, leaving our children shaking their heads with amazement at our unhealthy, old fashioned ways in a new fashioned world.

I suspect that’s because paradigm shifts -- real, life altering, enduring changes of heart, the kind that become harder to make after age 20 -- can be painful. .

I know this from personal experiences like childbirth, kidney stones, lay-offs and walking into walls while in the midst of a sudden cognizance: Change, especially personal change, can hurt, both physically and emotionally.

Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to do. Maybe that’s why it’s sometimes so hard to see our children grow and change, and to learn to change with them. But to fail to grow and change with our families is to grow apart and distant; to fail to make the necessary paradigm shifts as we grow older, is to simply grow old.

When we first moved to our new home in a rural part of Tampa, I determined what I thought was the most efficient drive along back country roads to our church. After I’d been driving that route once or twice a week for about a year, a church friend showed me the route he took. It looked longer to me, and his argument that it was, indeed, shorter, didn’t persuade me, even after I tried it a couple of times. It just seemed wrong. More important, it wasn’t the way I always drove.

So for nearly another year, I continued to drive my old route. Then one day, on a lark, I tried my friend’s directions again and – lo and behold! – the drive was suddenly and quite clearly shorter, more direct and more efficient. I checked the mileage. It was, in fact, about a mile shorter.

I was baffled. Why had I resisted what was clearly a better choice for so long? Why couldn’t I see the truth of the matter? The drive was even prettier than the one I’d been taking, which I had for so long considered the superior view, as well as the better route. I felt embarrassed by my stubbornness.

I was reminded of that experience recently while chatting with my now older teenage daughters. I said something transparently obvious and they laughed indulgently. I felt my status as immutable Motherhead teeter, as I’ve felt it wobble precariously on more than one occasion in recent months. I was still speaking like the mother of young girls, but now to young women who found me more amusing than instructive or inspiring. I was driving an old route when a new one was clearly in order.

And so I’ve begun, slowly, trying new paths of communication, and turning the wheel of leadership and decision making over to them more often. I’m not so much in charge anymore, as just along for the ride, identifying the occasional danger or point of interest as I would to anyone for whom I care.

It’s a little scary sometimes. They drive their lives fast and get distracted easily. But they also see things I never would have noticed when I was in the driver’s seat, and if I’m open to their ideas and insights, they share their visions with me and I grow in new ways.

Some parents don’t let go, and don’t make the paradigm shift from parenting young children, to guiding young adults. The most successful parents do make that shift, however painful it might be, and come out on the other side of it with a new and rewarding relationship with their growing and grown children.

It’s hard to respect someone who treats you like a child when you’re long past being one. But it’s a rich and mutually inspiring parent and child experience to have a mature relationship with someone who will listen to your ideas and insights, who knows you will listen and value her as the complete person you helped her become, and who is confident in your ability to embrace change in ways that help both of you grow.

###

The Red Wall

We just painted our living room wall red.

Not “rust” or “terra cotta,” or “rose,” but red – a deep, vibrant, striking, dramatic RED. And we dyed our curtains a wine colored shade to match.

I mention this because we are not, by nature, “red” people, but more “almond” or “ivory” kind of people. Our furniture is wood, our window treatments beige, our walls pale comfortable shades of green or blue, our floor a tan ceramic tile, our carpet some brownish hue. Our house is a yellowish sort of white with terra cotta accents. Our cars are unremarkable shades of green and gold. Our dog is black and tan.

We are – were—a neutral kind of folk.

Somewhere, at some time, my husband and I saw an interior red wall and liked it. For years we talked about painting one of the walls in our living room red. Finally we decided to do it. Our teen aged children equated this with a mid-life crisis.

“You want to do what?” they asked. “Why?”

Because we were tired of living in our box of bland crayons and ready to step outside the rut of our comfort zone to try something new. Because there was a rebate on paint at Home Depot. Because we could.

I know. Painting a wall doesn’t sound like much of a mid life crisis, or an “out of the box” kind of thing; not a wild stepping out as elaborate as skydiving or rock climbing or buying a Maserati. But getting out of your well-fitting little comfort zone, we found, is a great exercise that doesn’t have to be physically demanding or break the bank to be satisfying and life changing.

The kids watched dubiously as we scanned the rows of paint chips at the local home improvement store. They went into giggles suggesting outrageous possibilities like purple and puce. Gradually, we narrowed our choices down and settled on something called “awning red.” As the clerk added the necessary dyes to the base, my husband murmured something about our place looking like a bordello when we were done. When the clerk handed us a can of pink primer, we all stared.

“You’ll need this as your base coat,” he explained. “Or it’ll look like this.” He indicated a streaked, patchy example of blotted red paint on a board next to the counter.

We took the pink primer and the gallon of awning red paint and headed home, our eldest trying hard to keep her eyes from rolling in her head.

It’s hard to do something completely different, something outside the routine of daily living, especially as you get older. And that’s all the more reason we have to. To not try new things, explore new ideas, even those as benign as considering new colors, is to grow staid and placid and stagnant. Living forever in a beige house might be comfortable, but is it really living? If we never change our view, everything always looks the same. Without new perspectives, rooted in old ways, in old ideas, in old habits, we become old.

In that respect, we were carrying a lot more than just a gallon of paint out the door.

The wall became a family project. We dragged all the furniture out into the middle of the room, taped off the baseboards and the adjacent walls, and pulled the dusty artificial greenery off the plant shelves. We cheered and laughed when the first shades of pink rolled across the wall. We took pictures of our pink room and sent them to friends.

Several hours later, we rolled on the red. The effect was a little more sobering. This stuff was *red*! This was serious, decisive and bold.

“Wow,” one of the kids said, as we stepped back to look at the finished first coat. “That’s red.”

Yes, we told him. We knew.

But when the second coat had dried, we all applauded. The effect was phenomenal. The room went from unremarkable to stunning overnight. We rearranged the furniture, added some track lighting and sighed with satisfaction at the final results. My husband and I felt like we’d just gone on vacation, like we’d had a night on the town, like we’d created a masterpiece.

The kids were impressed.

“This looks great,” one said.

“It’s alright,” said our biggest doubter, giving us her strongest seal of approval.

“Way cool,” said our son.

I often catch my husband gazing admiringly at our red living room wall. I stand beside him and we put our arms around each other and feel a sense of shared accomplishment.

Sure, it’s just a room, just some red paint, just a weekend home improvement project that turned out surprisingly good.

But it’s also a tribute to seeing something through, to having an idea and not just talking about it, but doing it. Our kids got to see us step out and try something new, and worked with us while we did it.

We said all along that if we didn’t like, it was only paint and we could redo it. We took the opportunity to explain to them that it’s okay to try things out, with common sense and good humor, and to be objective about the results, but open minded about them, too.

Don’t ever stay in a rut, we told them – in your work, in your life, in your habits of thinking and being and doing. Keep learning, trying new things, exploring new ideas, and sharing them with others to keep your relationships, and your surroundings, fresh and interesting and alive.

It’s amazing what a little can of paint can accomplish.

(This story originally appeared in the St. Petersburg Times in 2005)

Misplaced Lessons - Leaving Well Enough Alone

By Theresa Willingham

Originally appeared in St. Petersburg Times, 2005

From the “Truth is Stranger than Fiction” files”: We once hit a bird with our car while on our way to the veterinarian’s with a dying mouse.

Technically, the bird hit us – but “Really!” The truth of this tale, though, lies not in the oddity of the event, but in the occasional vice of not leaving well enough alone.

The mouse, Betsey, was my then six year old daughter’s pet, and it was ill. The bird – an ardent male cardinal lusting after an evidently more athletic female – flew broadside into our minivan. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, but our convergent paths were well determined by then and there was nothing I could do except stop after the impact.

With my two little girls voicing their concerns from the back, I got out to look for the bird. It was there, in the road, flopping around piteously. I felt awful. How fortunate, I thought, that we were already on the way to the vet’s. We had some towels in the car, and I carefully wrapped the bird in them.

The vet announced the bad news for our mouse – it had to be put down, and was returned to my daughter in a little bow-tied box. And then the vet announced promising news about the bird: it would probably be alright. Nothing was broken, and it simply appeared to be in shock. I could check back with them later in the day for a progress report.

We went home quietly, shaken by the all the life and death drama around us, hopeful that the bird would pull through and help set the world back on a more even keel. We buried Betsey with suitable honors, and a few hours later, I called the vet.

The bird was fine, they said. They would let it go there, in a little wooded lot behind the office, if that was okay with me.

That’s when I did it.

That’s when I decided to do “something beautiful” and “thought provoking,” and orchestrate a lesson in “doing the right thing,” in how “things always work out for the best” and in the way “God cares for the smallest sparrow.”

So I told the kids the bird was fine and that we’d go back and get it. At the vet’s, they doubtfully handed us the bird, ensconced in a white box, and told us to be careful and not stress it too much. We drove back home slowly and carefully, not handling the box.

At home, we went into the back yard and I took the bird out of the box, having visions of releasing it like the dove of peace. I opened my hands and the bird lay there, frightened and unmoving. I thought perhaps it needed a more dramatic boost, like we’d seen on nature shows. So I threw the bird into the air, waiting for the restorative breeze of flight to blow against my cheeks.

The bright red bird fell like a rock, dead at my feet.

I have never before or since been so horrified at anything I have ever done.

The children stared at the bird, and then at me. We checked it over and confirmed that it was, indeed, dead, and then buried it in its white box, next to the mouse. My children, amazingly, gratefully, accepted my weak alibi that the bird was probably more injured by the accident than we’d all realized. But I knew better. I felt like a murderer, like an absolutely irredeemable fraud and charlatan, and like the worst mother in the world.

In my zeal to not only do good, but to look good while teaching my children some sort of enduring life lesson at the same time, I overlooked one the principle laws of parenting, teaching, and living:

Leave well enough alone!

I mean that in the very literal sense of the words. The bird had, in fact, recovered. It was well and I should have left it alone.

A wild bird expert later confirmed that for me. Wild birds with light injuries or just suffering from shock typically do much better when left alone and not handled.

I was reminded of this now old family story (that I only tell sheepishly and with great humility) when I was briefly tempted to round up my kids to “teach” them something recently. I don’t even remember what it was now. But when I looked around for them, I found them all playing together – my 11 year old son and his 13 and 15 year old sisters. They were laughing and running around the yard and having a great time.

I thought of the cardinal. I looked out at the kids. They were well. So I left them alone.

As soon as you have to go to any great length to teach something, or to point something out, the lesson is moot, I’ve often found. It’s great when everything clicks, when an event or observation happen at just the right moment, and everyone is there to “get it.”

But we can’t share every lesson or insight. Sometimes, the best we can do is appreciate the moment all alone.

And then leaving well enough alone becomes a lesson in itself.