Toe in the Water

On Tininess

On Tininess

I was watching a video on YouTube when I noticed a tiny speck making its way across the screen. At first, I thought it was a flaw in the video but, when I reached out to touch it, it took flight and wove a haphazard path through the air and into the darkness beyond the screen.

It was so small, right on the edge of human vision, and I marvelled that it could survive with winter coming on so swiftly here in the northeast. We refuse to resort to heating before November at the earliest.

But back to the little flying insect. The tiny creature was far too small for any details to be made out. So I have to surmise it was an insect with wings. What else could it have been?

The really remarkable thing about it, however, was its demonstration of life in so infinitesimally tiny a speck. How can life cram all those complex organs and instructions into so miniscule a body? Legs (it was walking when I first saw it), wings, presumably even eyes of some type. It doesn’t seem possible.

Which is a silly thought that was, when we consider the existence of microscopic forms of life - bacteria, single celled creatures and the like. But, even so, my tiny visitor has so much more contained within his minimal allotment of space. How endlessly amazing is the world.

And how difficult it is to find so many different ways to say, “small.”


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