quit swatting the fruit flies

Still Life with No Fruit Flies! Photo of blueberry jar with stray blueberries on coarse wooden tabletop from Margaret Jaszowska on Unsplash.


I thought about naming this Still Life with No Fruit Flies. That piece would begin, “You are not a bowl of bananas, apples, grapes, and clementines, so do not allow a swarm of fruit flies to quietly, almost invisibly, certainly peskily, swarm and hover untended.” You see why I chose not to do that.

This piece begins with a story about a puppy who was starting to gnaw on a colorful, green-minded reusable grocery bag while a woman was working on a computer and harboring a strong preference to stay on the computer and focus. She didn't want to get up and deal with a puppy. And that fuzzy wiggle-worm of a puppy, with all that adorable cutlery in its mouth, had gotten its paws on that bag and was all over it. But the computer task … But the puppy, the bag …

Add to this that the woman was working hard on not being irritated by things in her day-to-day life, with the greater goal of not feeling victimized by all the small and large things that happened to her while she struggled with what anyone would agree was a tricky set of circumstances. She wanted, in fact, to stop living a struggle.

That's why—since change happens only now, and now, and now—she decided to make a decision. She stopped typing just long enough to say to herself, What matters more to me now is completing this task and feeling good about that. I'm going to sacrifice the bag to that endeavor. While I know this officially makes it a no-longer reusable bag, it also cost something like a dollar, and I'll get another one. The puppy will be blissfully busy destroying it and lying around in the rubble for probably just enough time that I can do what I want to do. And that was that.

Before that moment, she was trapped in a swarm of fruit flies, and there was little to do in that scene but feel irritated and victimized (by a cute little puppy!—oh, the jailers we choose!).

There there's the man who's got a still-new business going. Because he thinks he's the doer and hasn't yet mastered surrendering what's not his to deal with (like outcomes and timing and how much money will come in when), while showing up for each thing that truly is his to deal with (like the next conversation, email, calculation, or bit of research), this man gets in trouble with carrying the business around everywhere he goes, so that he forgets to be present in other realms of life and have real relationships with the people he loves.

This man and I cooked up an experiment in which he stops what he's doing when he finds himself mentally in his work life off-hours, gets up, and just goes to work for a brief time. Quit swatting the fruit flies, and go be where you really are, attend to what you want to (or think you must) attend to, surrender the rest (again), and come back to presence in your home life. I look forward to seeing what comes of this experiment. This is his royal reminder to stay on it.

Another man somewhere around the globe wrote me that he felt a bit guilty because he'd been using a lull in his work life to make extra art (and he makes such inspired art!). My email back had the subject line DROP ALL GUILT, with the text “Don't allow the guilt to swarm around like fruit flies. If you're choosing to give time to that, and life seems to be conspiring with that, choose it fully—no guilt.”

Did you notice, in these three stories, the recurring theme of choice? When you let things hover untended like fruit flies, you're not choosing. You're not choosing what you want to do, what you want to give your energy to, what's calling you to pay attention and take action—something. What is it? Pause when you notice the fruit flies and make a choice. Your fruit flies could be pertinent to that moment or day, or they might point to ongoing pests like clutter or taxes or that gizmo that doesn't work—you might actually fix it or throw the thing out. Ah, but the fruit flies could also be in your face about the cherished dream you keep not getting to. Whatever it is, pay attention. Attend. Quit swatting the fruit flies.

Love and blessings, Jaya