Many years ago I read this quote from the Dalai Lama: “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a Mosquito”. It has stayed with me and pops up when I’m in front of a hurdle that seems too big to conquer.
If you read my blog last week “to have or have not a choice” you will know that it was the Lois Lowry novel, The Giver, that inspired me to write about choice. I enjoyed the book and decided to read the second book in the series: Gathering Blue, where a young girl called Kira is learning how to make natural dyes from plants but has trouble finding blue.
I was listening to it as an audio book on the beach in Punta Prima on the island of Menorca, where the water is as many shades of blue as you can imagine. My 16-year-old daughter was with me. We love to swim so we decided to submerge into the blues.
It is high season and very hot so the beach was busy and we decided to swim further out where there were not so many people swimming. We got to a place were the water was crystal clear and an amazing deep turquoise colour. It was deep and still we could see the patterns the waves had made in the sand. The water felt like a cooling velvet and the salt made it easy to float, we could hear people playing on the beach and motors from boats near by. We were happy, together in this perfect element. “Look at this colour” I said to my daughter “isn’t it just perfect?” my daughter laughed and looked a me with her olive green eyes, she had a little smile on her face. “You are in love with Menorca Mother!” “Oh yes I said, I love living here” “I wish I could eat this colour”, I said. “Me too” My daughter said and then she added, “we are funny, we wish we could swim in chocolate and eat the sea” we laughed and swam a little further. Then she added “I wish I could paint it”, “did you know that there is a pen that you can press on a colour and then it will paint that colour for you”, “oh wow” I replied. “ Can you use it in the sea and get this exact colour?” “No” she said. “Then it isn’t much use to us here, is it?” She looked at me with her tender eyes, shook her head and swam along as if I once again was asking too much.
Back on the beach, reading about a world of savages and self-interest, Kira is an imperfect but gifted girl, created by the author Lois Lowry in a simple society where people are still quite complex .In their hunter-gatherer way of life, they have a law and a hint of a lost religion. The imperfect and gifted girl had to make it to the end of this journey full of dangers that her creator Lois Lowry had put her on. The intention was clearly for the young girl to make a difference and therefore Louis Lowry made her a creative artist. As she says in her prologue: “creative artists have that capacity” “because, they have vision and power”. At the end of the book Kira holds the answer to a new fragile but peaceful beginning.
Do you choose to be the mosquito at times? Do you allow your loved ones to be?
I realized that my teenager just might be for me, that mosquito in the bedroom at night. She keeps me on my toes; she has taught me so much, most of all she has taught me to love unconditionally.
So I hope you are as happy as you can be and remember being kind is for free and so is being a mosquito for someone else, once in a while.
Best wishes
Ivalo