Wait in peace

I like to know something about the sources of quotes I read so Wikipedia has become my best Internet friend. This quote came to me this week, apropos I think, for my one-year Ode blogging anniversary.

When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace. J. Lubbock

Sir John Lubbock (1834-1913) was an English baron, banker, politician, archaeologist, and naturalist. As an American, my mind had instead gone right to Lubbock, as in Texas. So much for association. Sir John was also something of an amateur biologist and wrote on the subject of bees.

I think of bees and peace as being related. Bees, goes the conventional wisdom, “shouldn’t” be able to fly, according to the laws of aerodynamics. No one, it seems, has told the bees this sorry fact so they fly in defiance of the law anyway. Mary Kay Ash, founder of that Pink Cadillacked brigade of cosmetics consultants, gives fancy bee pins to her molto achievers to celebrate what they weren’t supposed to be able to do and what they went ahead and did anyway.

Bees. Peace. I wonder if you see the parallel. Some of you will already know that the bees on earth are dying in droves. No one, despite myriad theories, knows why. Only some scientists have even ventured a how. There are, however, a few sturdy strains of bees who are adapting, mutating and thriving.

Peace. We get to do our best every day, according to Sir John, and await the result in peace. I know he means our best at everything, but I read his words a little differently.

Oh, dear one, the days I fall off the peace wagon are more plentiful than the days I stay on it! I have a temper that likes to be righteous (and right!), an ego that needs its requisite stroking on time, and an ideal for our world against which I and all others consistently fall short.

So what?

So, this. Bees don’t know they can’t fly, so they do. I don’t know whether the one day I stay on the peace wagon, peace won’t establish itself all over this green marble called Earth. The bees don’t stop. Neither do I.