Bumblebee Science

One of my guardian angels visited us for the long President's Day weekend. She came in the form of my younger sister, whose humor, intelligence and cooking ability always make her a welcome guest in our home. That she can beat William in a game of HORSE, outwit Rob at the dinner table, and sing Mumford & Sons songs with me all weekend long are just cherries on the ice cream sundae of her visit. In the course of several walks together she dropped a few pearls of wisdom, one of which I managed to catch.

Karen told me that bumblebees should not be able to fly as calculated by Newtonian laws of physics. The bees, happily unaware of Newton's laws, fly on merrily. This caught my whimsy, as I pictured our summer horde of lavender-loving bumblebees zipping along in defiance of all logic. This morning I did a bit more research on the saying "bumblebees can't fly" and discovered that science does not actually prohibit the flight of bumblebees, but one has to take into account all kinds of variables to make it possible, and the early scientists did not do so.  Kind of the difference between planning out the amount of paint you will need to redo the dining room and the actual amount of paint you need after discovering the flaws in the wall, light switch cover, etc.

My new research doesn't disrupt my delight in the rebellious flight of the bee. It's just like saying "that's impossible" about any task, and then - when it's accomplished and proven against all odds - going back and saying, "I didn't really mean it." Anything is possible; life is composed of infinite possibilities. All we need to do is choose which we want to pursue, and we can make it happen. We can heal, we can create, we can do anything. And when we're done, then let someone go back and put the science and logic under our amazing feats.