My awareness of the fly shifted this morning. Here is what I discovered. 

The fly’s constant buzzing and rapid movements, the zipping around my body in dizzying patterns - all these give off the perception of a large creature, one with enough power to disrupt my quiet space. Its soft landing on my skin makes it seem drastically larger that it is. As it tickles and fans me, it causes such an annoying sensation that I feel, for a moment, that I’ve been attacked. 

This morning as I watched a fly land on a flower, I understood it differently. The (average) fly is quite small, so tiny it can land on a delicate flower petal and walk the length of it without causing the petal to sag or shift under its weight. It can launch itself into the air again without perceptible sound, no sighing or heaving, not even a “get ready for take off” shift of its insubstantial frame. Yet when it’s in flight again, the tiny insect monopolizes the air, its sounds echo and pulse. It fills up the space around me with rapid vibrations and grabs my attention each time it comes to rest on my skin. It is there and not there simultaneously. 

I’m struck by the power of perception. How the practically weightless fly seems immense as it manipulates the air and rides the light. Perhaps the fly purposefully obscures an honest perception of itself. Being so tiny, it makes more evolutionary sense for us to perceive it as large and powerful, not small and weightless. Whether the fly is purposeful in its obfuscation or not isn’t my point though. What is interesting is that it can shift our perception of it: one second it's a quiet dot on a fine petal and the next minute it’s a giant sound in our ears and a distracting movement on our skin. Maybe we’re meant to perceive the fly as both large and small, powerful and delicate. 

This may sound funny, but the other day, I had a random thought float into my awareness: What if flies have something to teach me?