Day #278 On the Absence of Fear

Remember when I told you about the energy-saving film I put on my front windows?

Aside from the wonderful way it cuts the heat from the morning sunshine, there’s been another major benefit. I don’t scare the birds!

I never realized how much I used to frighten them until all of a sudden I didn’t anymore. I can stand three inches from the glass (or even closer) and watch my cheeping, preening, eating, singing feathered friends without their being aware of me. They can’t see into my living room.

At times I’ve counted 20 goldfinches on my front porch feeder. Friday morning two Carolina wrens were starting a new nest in a basket on the porch railing. They didn’t know I was watching them, so they just went on doing their birdy things.

When I first moved to Atlanta almost 20 years ago, I met a woman who mentioned that her husband was a cross-dresser. He agreed to talk with me about what it was like, and he told me of a most interesting discovery.

Before he’d gotten married, he was dressed up once, waiting for a ride to a party. He was standing near the door of his apartment building on a downtown Atlanta street; it was late at night (“It takes me HOURS to get ready. How do you women do it so quickly?” he’d said. “For one thing,” I answered him, “I don’t have to shave before putting on makeup.”) While he waited, a lone woman walked down the sidewalk toward him. She walked past him. She kept going. And that was when he had his ah-ha! moment.

He had never noticed the fear before until he saw the absence of fear. That woman had thought she was walking past another woman. She didn’t pull her purse closer to her body. She didn’t hold her keys in a defensive posture. She didn’t move farther toward the street. She just walked past. No fear. No getting ready just in case.

The birds are the same way. I’d never before noticed how much I worried them until all of a sudden I wasn’t worrying them. What I see now when I look out my energy-filmed windows is an absence of fear.

Of course, all I have to do is open the door to get back to that old way of seeing things.

Bees are MUCH easier. They never get startled—ever. I don’t have to ease the back door open. I don’t have to creep up on their hives. I can just relax and BEE me.

BEEattitude for Day # 278:

       Blessed are those who are open to learning new ways of appreciating us bees, for they shall relax more around us.

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