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 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 (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 the next conversation, calculation, communication, or bit of research). What troubled our businessman was that he found himself carrying the business around everywhere he went, so that he forgets to be present in other realms of life and have real relationships with the people he loved.

So work would come to mind constantly when he wasn't working. He would engage mentally then swat it away, then engage, then swat, the engage, then swat ... The fruit flies don't just go away no matter how much swatting you do.

This man and I cooked up an experiment in which he stopped what he was doing when he found himself mentally riffling through work stuff off-hours. The new plan was to get up and just go work for a brief time. Quit swatting the fruit flies, and go be in actuality where he was mentally. Attend to some bit he wanted to (or thought he must) attend to, surrender the rest (again), then come back to 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 and choose to take a clear action toward addressing or releasing it?

People feel guilty equally for not doing some odious task (pushing it away and continuing not to deal) or for engaging with some activity they love. I would love for everyone to DROP ALL GUILT. Don't allow the guilt to swarm around like fruit flies. 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 task (in the kindest, most non-resistant way, most easeful way) and feel good about doing it. Or set yourself up to do the task at another, better time: carve out a slot for that on your calendar; take a moment to communicate with someone who can help or support you in the task—getting started, moving forward, or bringing it to completion. 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 be just acknowledging 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 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 pesky, bad-feeling mental pests and make a choice. Your fruit flies could be pertinent to that moment or day, or they might point to never-ending bugaboos like clutter or taxes or that gizmo that doesn't reliably 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. Pause. Attend. Quit swatting the fruit flies and make a choice that actually moves them along.

Love and blessings, Jaya