The Fly

Photo by Lora Moore-Kakaletris on Unsplash

The summer brings many wonderful gifts: warm sunshine, blooming flowers, green grass, bird song, outdoor concerts, picnics, farmers markets, snow cones, and water sports. It also brings its fair share of uninvited guests: mosquitos, ants, gnats, wasps, ticks, and of course, flies. As careful as we’ve been to shut the doors behind us, flies just keep finding their way into our kitchen this summer. My husband—aka Great Conqueror of Flies and Cockroaches—is undeterred. He’s armed the household with extra fly swats and is determined not to be outmatched.

For a while, I joined in the battle with gusto, whacking the little creatures into oblivion whenever I got the chance. But each satisfying smack came with a twinge of guilt at so nonchalantly crushing another living being.

. . . which got me thinking about Ahimsa, a core principle of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. According to this principle, all living things—from humans and elephants to insects, plants, and microbes—are endowed with soul and are kin to one another. When we harm them, we harm ourselves. When we respect and care for them, we contribute to the wellbeing of all.

Surely our world needs more Ahimsa and fewer fly swats. Though I have to admit, it’s lot harder to compassion a fly out of the kitchen and it is to whack it.

The Fly

by William Blake (1757-1827)

Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

From Songs of Experience, first published in 1794