Parable of the Pill Bug
The biggest gift from the smallest life
I am out running on a stretch of sidewalk by a busy road. It is the tail end of spring, when all manner of fauna are still in abundance, spilling out into the manmade grays and blacks of modernity. But summer looms, evidenced by a sun that burns with an early morning passion as soon as it rises.
My footsteps gain their familiar rhythm and I allow my breath and mind to fall into step on the concrete. The drab sidewalk curves and traces the perimeter of a large, grassy hill, like a paintbrush had swept gently around the greens and yellows with only dirty paint water. I begin to notice the sidewalk under my feet growing speckled. Dozens of small creatures are crawling slowly. They are pill bugs, marching slowly along the sidewalk like nature’s gentle army.
The adults are a sort of dark ash color but the babies are brown and so small. I marvel that something so small can have enough nervous tissue to move and think. Do they think? I wonder. They curl up into spheres when disturbed. One might call it reflex but another might say it is thought, intention. There is no arguing that they act toward their own survival. And this, the largest force in the universe, is found in mere millimeters, right here on this sidewalk, where our feet pass over them like they are nothing.
I begin to alter my pace, my gait, to avoid what now seems like hundreds of the tiny things. My steps here trace the steps on my own life’s path: ever-changing, never straight, never a real rhythm. And now I swerve to allow these small things to pass by unscathed. I am doing well but inevitably miss my intended step and I look behind me to see a handful of crushed creatures. Some are dark ash. But one is brown. My heart breaks.
It was the smallest life, but it was a life.
I sit on the edge of the sidewalk to catch my breath. I am at the doorway between two worlds. Cars rush by in front of me, people going somewhere, coming from somewhere, moving and moving. But behind me nature sits patiently, grass and daisies swaying with each passing vehicle. She says she has been here for a long time. She has seen man rise and fall many times. She will wait patiently again.
A small tickle on my leg. I look down and see one of the largest pill bugs crawling over my knee. He is a rich black and as he walks his armor flexes gracefully.
“Why do you lament?” he asks.
I think for a moment before speaking. “I altered my steps. I changed my gait. I bent in service of these little things. And still, I killed them.”
“I see,” the bug says, stopping on the top of my thigh to look up at me.
I begin to feel a tide of anger rising, here at the shore between street and mountain, man and world. I set out to run, in the fleeting moments I have to myself.
“What is the point of your shell?” I ask. “Why would nature create something to protect you if it doesn’t keep you from getting crushed?”
The pillbug lies still on my knee. So still I wonder if he is still here. Finally, he speaks.
“One man looks upon a setting sun while another is watching it rise.” He looks at my eyes to make sure I understand. I do not.
“There is always more than one way to see the same thing,” he says. “Perhaps you are wrong about our shells.”
I wait for him to go on.
“You say nature created these shells that ended up failing. But perhaps failure was the plan all along.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“You choose your steps in your life and they can advance you in your path. And yet each footprint can fill another with love or cause harm,” he says.
“Yes, but how does this relate to your soft skeleton?” I ask.
“Maybe our shells were meant to break,” he says. “Perhaps they are intended to show you what it means to spare others from pain and to let you feel the weight of when you cannot.”
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