Seeing the small is insight. ~Dao De Jing
I don’t know what insight I gained, but I spent almost an hour this morning just looking out the back window at the birds and the squirrels. My desk looks out over the backyard. While I was attending to things on my computer this morning, I looked over the screen into a rainy wonderland of activity.
I put a small plate of nuts on the ground for the squirrels every morning. This was the truce we reached last summer to keep them off the bird feeder. The feeder and the birdbath are always busy, especially this time of year. The birds swoop in and out at the feeder, crowding together, taking breaks in the rhododendron right outside the window, along with the hummingbirds resting between trips to the feeder that is just out of sight.
It’s the squirrels, however, that provide the comic relief. They squabble so much over the nuts that I started putting out two plates far enough apart for all to share. Or so I thought. They wait for me every morning, and as soon as the plates are on the ground, they start chasing each other in circles, up and down the trees, and over the roof (I can hear their little feet scampering overhead).
This morning, I was watching as one squirrel would grab a nut and then look for a place to bury it. He would start digging and then realize that another squirrel was watching, so he’d zip off to another location. Dig, dig, dig, then place the nut in the hole, scoop dirt over it and pat it down. Pat, pat, pat. Then off for another treasure. Sometimes a squirrel would get hungry, dig up what was previously buried and have a little snack.
The scene loses a lot in the telling, but I sat there watching it all, entranced and enchanted. What an ordinary little thing, birds and squirrels in the backyard. Yet I found it marvelous, so moving and magical that I actually teared up. I closed my computer so I could just sit there undistracted and be amazed by the blessing of witnessing what, for those minutes, seemed like the most important thing I could be doing with my time.
I thought of that line from the Dao De Jing, and wondered what profound insight I might have gained. I couldn’t think of a thing, and moreover, it just didn’t seem to matter. And maybe that was the point. Just being, just watching, just enjoying, not thinking, not justifying, not doing.
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. ~Robert Brault
I’m reminded of a line from The Color Purple – sometimes I sets & thinks & sometimes I just set (something to that effect). Just being. There is no nothing. My cousin often talks of “lake tv” when she just looks out at the lake from her viewpoint on the shore.
Lake TV reminds me of hawk TV, something that happened several years ago when hawks nested in a big tree on our block. When the four babies left the nest, they were just everywhere — on people’s cars, on the fence, on the light posts. I have a water feature in my backyard, and the whole family liked to take a bath in it. When the hawks where around, whoever saw them would text the other neighbors and we’d all go outside to watch them. Very entertaining! When I’m at the cabin, I often just sit on the deck or by the creek. Great quote from a great movie! Thanks, Mona!