Today I Give Thanks for Little Lives

Thankful Everyday 1-24-25

https://thankfulevery.blogspot.com/

 

Today I give thanks for those little lives, which seem to hold all kinds of big lessons for my own life.

 

Yesterday, I was at the beach watching the enormous waves cascade over rocks on their way to the shore when I happened to glance down.  Wiggle, wiggle, wriggle, wriggle.  A tiny piece of something – a rock, a clump of sand? - seemed to be moving…squiggle, squiggle.  I scrunched down closer and saw that it was some kind of tiny animal carrying a shell on its back – maybe a snail?  A closer look suggested that this was some type of teensy crab.  Maybe this is a very, very small hermit crab?

 

I dug into my backpack, pulled out my phone, and quickly clicked off several frames, hoping that the little creature was somewhere in my shot.  Got it!  Before it slipped away across the sand, I knew I had caught an image.  But it wasn’t until I cropped one of the photos this morning that I realized how beautiful this animal’s shell was, with its black and pale gray zig-zag pattern.  It reminds me of a Navajo basket my grandmother kept on a shelf in my grandfather’s study, eye-catching in its contrast with the books and medical instruments that lined every other shelf in their Iowa home.

 

And there it was, decades later, the same pattern right at my feet – in miniature!  What you see on your computer screen is probably much bigger than the original.   A quarter inch work of art, carried on the back of its scruffy owner, moving forward diligently, continuously, persistently.  Even as the seagulls swooped all around, the tide moved inward, and the huge waves crashed not far away.  Who knows where that little crab was going?  Who knows what’s next for that little crab dragging along the work of its lifetime? 

 

What other masterpieces are out there in my everyday life that I don’t take the time to observe?  What would life be like if I focused my eyes on the little moments of beauty right there at my feet?  Maybe these little lives could show me how to keep going, too, even as the big world around me seems to be tumbling down.

 

Today I give thanks for little lives that infuse my own life with their beauty and persistence.