On Jan 20th, 2024 a headline flashed across my phone and made me do a little shimmy. It had the audacity to identify the news as a ‘rare’ event even though we had just finished experiencing something similar in 2021. That year, two broods of Cicadas known as ‘Brood X’ (for the Roman numeral) emerged in tandem, laying claim to our outdoor sanctuaries and making them a hazard all their own.
One dog day that summer I was sitting in my bay window watching the omnipresent, noisy, yellow haze created by the flying frenzy of yellow jackets, bees, mosquitoes, wasps, birds and, among them, the mighty Brood X. As I marveled at nature’s many pilots, my eyes caught one Cicada flying slower than everyone else. His flight was tedious and ungraceful yet no one from the alphabet soup of fliers ran into him or one another – a feat of co-existence so graceful and so precise, it had me enthralled.
Within a few minutes the slow poke had all my attention. He would land on something, seemingly to catch his breath and then resume his cumbersome flight again…..fly-land-fly-land-fly… seemed to be his entire existence. I quickly found myself feeling sympathy for this otherwise hazardous pest, wondering if it was nearing the end of its life, and if so, how it was feeling at that moment. Did it feel pain? Did it know it might be dying? The questions came pouring in.
“If you really want to know, walk a mile in its shoes!” said a voice unheard, loud and clear. “Weird,” I thought to myself. “Why would I reduce myself to…” and then it struck me – clear as day – the arrogance of the word ‘reduce’. The realization jolted me off my self-appointed high perch with a sobering thud. “If these Cicadas were lowly creatures that gave me the creeps, I very well could be the same to them,” I thought. Duly horrified at my inadvertent conceit, I began to swap shoes with the Cicada and my imagination took flight…
There I was, buried underground all my life. Safe, secure, young, and provided for, the entire time. One fine day something tells me it is time to mature and find my mate (oooh romantic!) but there is a catch (of course there is!). The endeavor must be pursued outside the only environment I have known all my life and oh, by the way, it ends in certain death soon after. “Not much different than the human experience,” I thought to myself “going out into the world after spending a good many formative years under the shelter of our parents.” There was however, a fundamental difference between us. We might be able to stay longer or even go back to our previous homes, the Cicadas cannot. They heed the instinct to emerge with no option of re-burying themselves if they fail in the pursuit of the fundamental cause – mating. At this point my (human) frontal cortex went into overdrive.
While my little brain buzzed with the complexities of what might be the mindset of the Cicadas, I could see that Brood X outside my window clearly did not care to debate these musings. Instead, they continued unabated, so great their natural drive that it leads them to the surface, to their mate, and to their end, seemingly without any outside help. All they have to do is just ‘be’, the rest works itself out. “Wow!” I thought to myself, and before my next thought could take shape, I heard that voice again – the one that compels me to learn, to evaluate, to grow. “Who’s the lesser being now?”
The truth was apparent and it was no contest. What had always been clumsy, directionless, and annoying insects were suddenly an evolved being to me, each little life displaying unshakable faith in its Creator. Reassured souls who know that all the provisions of their life will come to them, the only GPA they need is the one they already carry in their DNA. Perhaps it was fitting then, that they be known as ‘Brood X’. Not for the Roman Numeral, but because they possess an inherent X factor.
And so it was, in that one afternoon I went from an arrogant human being looking down my nose at these cacophonus, ugly, creatures to aspiring to be like them and experience the same reassured conviction that I too come with everything I need to fulfil the job I came here to do. “Perhaps we are no different than these fliers,” I said out loud to no one around, “aren’t we too a strange looking species among many, navigating our lives, very likely fully equipped and empowered by a Supreme Project Manager?” My inner reassurance now palpable, I was never prouder to be counted on par with an insect. May we all be so lucky to be guided to our calling and fulfill it with the ease and aplomb of an insect.
Now that, dear reader, is an X Factor worth possessing!
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