January 24. Day 24. Buzzing with excitement

 

I am sure self help books are extraordinarily helpful to some people such as the people who write, publish or otherwise profit from them. Personally, I find them either extraordinarily trite, an exercise in stating the bleedingly obvious or fine in principle  but the principle is never the hard bit, the following it through is.  Take this little gem. This is what dragonflies are supposed to remind us:

• Spend time near the water
  
• Be colorful
• Enjoy a good reed
  
• Zoom in on your dreams
  
• Appreciate long summer days
• Keep your eyes open
  
• Just wing it!

Someone is selling post cards with a quite lovely picture of a dragonfly and this piece of inspiration. Of course dragonflies could remind us of a whole different set of things. As always, it is in the way you look at it. When I watched this dragonfly at the City Botanic Gardens today I could have seen these traits:

• Never stick to anything for very long
• It's an awesome idea to eat on the fly
• If you live a year, you are very, very lucky
• Mosquitoes make a great meal
• The best way to approach prey is to mash it to a pulp with a powerful serrated jaw
• What big eyes you have Dragonfly. All the better to see you with my dear
• Don't bother with foreplay. See a girl you like, amps your forearms around her neck and deliver a vicious bite to subdue her

It puzzles me how I am not writing greeting cards for a living. Poetic, I am. Anyway while a dragonfly may never teach me to spend time near the water nor wing it, I admit I find them hypnotic to watch and most attractive. That's good enough for me.