This afternoon I was speaking to a friend when I noticed an incredibly tiny spider (about this big: X) , obviously recently born, descending from an invisible thread, and being gently blown around by ambient atmospheric motion. I was transfixed. I used a long paintbrush to capture the strand of web, and the tiny young spider, obviously recently born within the box of my home, climbed the web to the long, thin handle of the brush. I wanted a better look at this creature, so I took it into the sunlight as it climbed to the tip of the handle. Then, suddenly, I realized something even more astonishing than all of this. This was the first moment it had ever seen the sun. It had been born, perhaps only a few days ago, in a box. Wherever it may have been, it was not in sunlight. Now, for the first time, it was seeing the Sun. And I was there, holding it. With it with my whole attention. And it was as if I was seeing the sun for the first time. And as if I was with every organism that ever saw the sun for the first time. We spent a bit of time there, in the sun. Then it turned to me. Smaller than a pinhead. And gestured with its forelegs. Organisms neither need nor employ language. I turned from the window, went out my back door, and connect the stick to an appropriate escape route. From the box. Into nature. And the sun world. The tiny insect liberated me. It was not the other way, as many might suppose. Indeed, it is always this way. Those to whom I am able to show the sun release me from all cages. Funny how they declare that it was I who liberated them, when they get over their shock at how, all these years, they had never seen the sun. Not even once. Or at least, not since ‘they were little’.

This afternoon I was speaking to a friend when I noticed an incredibly tiny spider (about this big: X) , obviously recently born, descending from an invisible thread, and being gently blown around by ambient atmospheric motion. I was transfixed. I used a long paintbrush to capture the strand of web, and the tiny young spider, obviously recently born within the box of my home, climbed the web to the long, thin handle of the brush. I wanted a better look at this creature, so I took it into the sunlight as it climbed to the tip of the handle. Then, suddenly, I realized something even more astonishing than all of this.

This was the first moment it had ever seen the sun. It had been born, perhaps only a few days ago, in a box. Wherever it may have been, it was not in sunlight. Now, for the first time, it was seeing the Sun. And I was there, holding it. With it with my whole attention. And it was as if I was seeing the sun for the first time. And as if I was with every organism that ever saw the sun for the first time. We spent a bit of time there, in the sun. Then it turned to me. Smaller than a pinhead. And gestured with its forelegs. Organisms neither need nor employ language. I turned from the window, went out my back door, and connect the stick to an appropriate escape route. From the box. Into nature.

And the sun world.

The tiny insect liberated me. It was not the other way, as many might suppose. Indeed, it is always this way. Those to whom I am able to show the sun release me from all cages. Funny how they declare that it was I who liberated them, when they get over their shock at how, all these years, they had never seen the sun. Not even once. Or at least, not since ‘they were little’.