Saturday, September 01, 2007

Bugs' Lives


I hope you have seen the Disney/Pixar film A Bug's Life by now. The Web site for the film says the inspiration came from the kid's tale of the Ant and the Grasshopper, showing that industriousness is better than idleness. In the movie, Flik is one ant who stands up to grasshoppers who not only fiddle away their lives but DEMAND food from the industrious ants. Life isn't fair is another message from the movie.

Still, we can learn a lot from bugs. As I write this, we're coming off a week in which the noisy cicadas and locusts in the daytime are gradually being replaced by grasshoppers and crickets at night. I live by a river, and it is fun to watch the bats swoop around the bridge scooping up bugs at twilight. I found a spider trying to make a link between the front door and the mail slot. Seasons change, and the shift in bug life is one sign of that. People change too, and that is sort of what is bugging me now. We hope that we will grow and improve and get smarter and wiser and less prone to screwups. At the same time, we hope that the good things will stay the same.
Alas, the former hope doesn't always happen, and certainly the latter doesn't seem to happen either. Autumnilia is not just a blog, but a condition, it seems. As I get older, I hoped I would get wiser. And I hoped that things that are now wistful memories to me would have been part of the normal condition. A year ago, I thought I was a lot smarter than I feel now. And a year ago, I was longing for, working toward and embracing the whole concept of change.

So in that sense, looking at then from the perspective of now, I can say things do change. They definitely do change. Ants that can get over the idea of letting the grasshoppers run the show are better off, anyway.
The image at the top is from the Pixar Web site for the movie A Bug's Life. I hope use of the image in the context of this Blog entry is within the realm of fair use. And if it isn't, I hope the powers that be understand I had good intentions. Here's the site link, by the way: http://www.pixar.com/featurefilms/abl/

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