Saturday, August 13, 2011

Cricket Intentions

Over the past month and a half I’ve been moving my household and my office. Didn’t intend for it to fall that way, but Life does move quickly sometimes. I’ve been very preoccupied. Haven’t been writing much, which is very unlike me. A great many things have changed. I’m exhausted but it’s all working out and my life is starting to feel normal again. A little bit anyway.

The other day though, I witnessed the most amazing change in another being’s life, and so I want to write about it now.

I purchased a pot of greens and a pot of catnip at the local pet supply store, and brought them to my new home for the cats. These pots and all the routine groceries were set down by the front door while I dealt with putting chilled items away. Out of the corner of my eye I spied my younger cat intently fixed on trying to catch something in the pile of groceries. Oh dear, I wondered. What did I bring in with me?

A cricket was barely eluding my cat’s pounce. It was only a matter of time before cat would triumph so I intervened and inverted a glass jar over the cricket and took him out to the patio to release him, from whence he rapidly hopped over to the edge of the woods and away.

My cat glared at me and walked away to start munching on the catnip. Then it struck me. What that cricket had achieved.

Only a few hours before he was sitting in a pet supply store, seemingly doomed to be sold to someone with a large hungry pet reptile. They don’t call them Feeder Crickets for nothing.

But no. That isn’t what happened. This cricket managed to hop out of the enclosure. Or maybe he fell out of a bag on the way to the check out. Point being, he made it from the Feeder Cricket Container all the way to the Catnip display. He sat in a catnip plant. Then I brought the catnip plant home. He hopped off. He was then menaced by a fierce predator but once again Deus Ex Machina swooped in and poof! He’s outside in nature, living his life as a free cricket.

What an incredible series of events! Was it random? Did the cricket set up an intention to get to the wild somehow? I’m put in mind of the Chilean Miners (all respect; I’m not comparing them to crickets directly!) and how the one miner dreamt of running in a marathon and then did it.

However it happened it was great. It reminded me to not worry so much about how things are going to get accomplished. It reminded me that the important thing, from an energy standpoint, is to set the intention. “I will be free and in the wild once more; I am transcending the Feeder Cricket Container”. Or something. I do not know how crickets think.

I think the magical lesson in this little drama I watched unfold is to set our intentions, and then relax, stay alert, and when you see the time is right to act, well then act. And when you see the time is right to perch in the catnip, well then perch in the catnip. And if a large predator menaces you, well you never know what may swoop in and in a twinkling of an eye, set you free.