HAIR IN THE EYE
Everyone knows what happens when a hair gets into the eye.
One tiny strand is enough to make us blink, rub, shed tears, and fumble about till we get it out. Eyes are made to see. Hair in the eye is a nuisance. Plain and simple.
Yet there is a creature that wears a whole forest of hair on its eyes.
The honeybee.
I came upon this odd sight when I put a honeybee's eye beneath a microscope lens.
At such close range, an eye no longer looks like an eye. It becomes a vast dome, roofed with thousands of tiny tiles, each laid neatly beside the next. Under slanting light, they shine blue and cold, like steel fresh from the forge.
And there, midst all those tiles, hair grows.
Real hair. With roots and tips. Some strands long, some short. Some stand tall, some lean sideways, and some reach out as though to feel what lies beyond.
How strange!
Nature took such pains to build an eye so finely made, then went and planted hair all over it.
Had it been a human eye, someone would have reached for the tweezers by now.
But the bee sees no need to mend a thing.
She still flies, still seeks out flowers, still finds her way home. Those hairs, which seem so much in the way, help keep dust from her eyes as she goes about her work.
So perhaps what looks like a hindrance may sometimes be part of what lets us see.
I sat looking at the photograph for quite a while.
On one side were the eye's tiny tiles, row upon row, neat and cold. On the other were the slender hairs, growing with no care for straight lines or tidy shapes. Light caught their tips, held there for a breath, then slipped away into the dark.
A world built with such care, yet filled with things that seem so out of place.
It made me think.
We humans like our eyes clear. We want the world before us sharp, clean, and set in order. When something gets in the way, we brush it aside. At times, even what we have yet to understand becomes something we would rather do without.
But the honeybee wears those hairs all her life.
No grumbling. No wish for a new pair of eyes.
I had meant to take a sharp photograph of an eye.
Instead, I found myself lost in the hairs growing upon it.
Perhaps, now and then, to see something worth seeing, we must stop trying to sweep everything out of sight.
Or perhaps there is no need to make so much of it.
The honeybee has hair growing in her eyes.
I have none.
Yet I still get so much wrong.
……
