quit swatting the fruit flies

Still-life image of a jar glass jar full of blueberries with stray berries on the coarse wooden tabletop it stands on. From Margaret Jaszowska on Unsplash.

I originally wrote this piece in April of 2014. Here I am more than a decade later, still telling my coaching clients to STOP SWATTING THE FRUIT FLIES. It’s such a great metaphor for the things we keep ignoring that keep tugging at us—and it gets people’s attention. So I’ve just given it a polish, and here it is for you to play with NOW.

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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. While she was half-annoyed, half trying to push through and keep working, her energy was divided. Part of her was swatting the fruit flies, and the fruit flies were swarming right back in, as they do. So she stopped for a moment.

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 was the man running a new business who hadn't yet worked out that he wasn't the doer and hadn't yet mastered surrendering what's not his to deal with (aka, the Universe’s business, like outcomes and timing and how much money will come in when). He didn't know how to feel great or good enough about managing only what was fully his and trusting that the rest is held, supported, and orchestrated by Universal intelligence. (It's so liberating to simply show up for your own business, which unfolds here and now—just the next conversation, calculation, communication, or bit of research, for example.) What troubled our businessman was that he found himself carrying his work around everywhere he went, so that he forgot to be present, to show up in presence in other realms of life, and to have real relationships with the people he loved.

So work would come to mind constantly when he (technically) wasn't working. He would engage mentally then swat it away, then engage, then swat, the engage, then swat ... Fruit flies don't just go away no matter how much swatting you do. (And, again, this creates divided energy, which feels bad and gets you stuck.)

This man and I cooked up an experiment in which he would stop what he was doing when he found himself mentally riffling through work stuff off-hours. The new plan was for him to get up and consciously, out of choice, go do some work-related task for a bit. He would quit swatting the fruit flies, and instead follow the mental pull to go deal with some bite-sized bit of work. Once he'd attended to his business even on some small level, he could better surrender the rest (again), then come back to full (or closer to full) presence in his home life.

I invite you to run your own experiments. What could it look like to pause with the thing you're swatting at? To choose both the pause and the next choice you’d like to make next? What if you made a choice to take some clear action toward addressing or releasing what’s tugging at you?

I’ve noticed that people feel no more guilty for NOT doing some odious task (pushing it away and continuing not to deal) than for allowing themselves to engage with some activity they love. I would love for everyone to DROP ALL GUILT. It’s such an unproductive emotion (so truly useless to feel over not being productive enough). Don’t allow guilt (whether about what you are or aren’t doing) to swarm around like fruit flies that you just kinda swat at. (Swatting is also unproductive.)

Choose to give time to the things you love and get life-giving pleasure from. Choose it fully—no guilt. Or choose to do the undesirable task (in the kindest, most nonresistant, easeful way) and feel good about showing up for a necessary task that moves something forward in a realm you want to show up for, that moves you closer to some intention, that represents good self-care or care of what you’re responsible for. Or do some simple thing now to set yourself up to do the task at another, better time—like carving out a slot for that on your calendar; or taking a moment to communicate with someone who can help or support you in the task, or whose next move will affect yours—or whatever.

We can get stuck at any phase of a project, and there's no problem. No hovering guilt needed to get unstuck! Just the right action here and now (which could even be to simply acknowledge this isn't the time and getting behind that), then a release back into the flow.

Are you taking in the recurring theme of choice? When you let things hang there untended, like fruit flies, you're not in choice. You're not choosing what you want, what you might do toward that wanting, what you might want to give your energy to. In the absence of choice, your split energy kind of yanks you back and forth as you feel increasingly annoyed (or insert your more accurate emotion) and just keep (ineffectively, nonproductively) swatting.

What if you paused to notice this? Pause. Then make a clear choice to respond to what's calling you that wants a bit of your attention and tending. Ask yourself some useful question: What’s actually needed now? What could I simply take care of right now to feel better? What could I release so I can drop in fully with the option of my choice?

It’s not that hard to pause  when you notice bad-feeling mental pests. It typically feels great to make a choice, even a small one, and to follow through with that choice. Your fruit flies could be pertinent to this moment or this day, or they might point to never-ending bugaboos like clutter or taxes or that gizmo that doesn't reliably work (which you might actually fix—or throw the damn 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. Pause. Attend. Quit swatting the fruit flies and make a choice that actually moves them along—and moves you along your chosen path.

Love and blessings, Jaya