This morning started like many others, just a quick errand, with Piper happily riding along in the back seat, securely fastened in her seatbelt like she owns the place.
When we got home, I backed into the garage, turned off the car, and pressed the button to close the door.
It came down almost all the way, and then it suddenly went back up again.
I sat there for a moment, a bit puzzled, watching as the door began to rise. And that’s when I saw it.
A very large bumblebee made a quick escape underneath the lifting door and out into the open air.
Well now.
I pressed the button again, and this time the door closed perfectly, as if nothing had happened.
And I have to admit, I felt a bit relieved for both of us. I wasn’t too keen on crossing paths with a trapped and possibly agitated bumblebee later on, and just as importantly, I wouldn’t have wanted to see any harm come to it either. They may be small, but they have important work to do.
And I couldn’t help but wonder. Did that bee know exactly what it was doing?
Did it sense the door coming down and make a split-second decision to drop low enough to trigger the sensor? Or was it simply a coincidence of timing?
I suppose I’ll never know for sure. But it did make me pause.
There was a time when I might have pressed the button again, closed the door, and moved on without a second thought. Today, I sat there a little longer and let myself wonder about it.
Out of curiosity, I later looked into bumblebees a little more, and what I found only added to the moment. They are incredibly efficient pollinators, able to respond quickly to changes in light, movement, and subtle shifts in their environment. They don’t think in the way we do, of course, but they are finely tuned to what’s happening around them. In many ways, they are simply very good at being what they are meant to be.
Still, in that moment, it felt like more than instinct.
There’s also something about that moment that stayed with me. That bee didn’t stop to analyze or overthink. It simply found its way out and went.
It made me think about how easy it is for us to do the opposite. We can spend so much time thinking about what we should do next, where we should go, or whether we should do something at all, that we end up staying right where we are.
Maybe the garage isn’t just a garage.
Maybe sometimes it’s us, sitting there, door half closed, wondering what to do next.
And maybe we don’t need to have it all figured out before we move. Maybe we just need to do what that bee did… find the opening and go.
And the truth is, this stage of life doesn’t come with unlimited time. If there’s something we want to do, somewhere we want to go, or something new we want to try, perhaps the better choice is not to overthink it.
Just go.
The bee didn’t change. It was just being a bee.
Maybe what’s really changed is me.
I think that’s why these days I find myself noticing things I might once have rushed past. A small interruption becomes something worth thinking about. A simple moment becomes a question.
And perhaps that’s one of the quiet gifts of this stage of life, having the time to look a little closer, to wonder a little longer, and to appreciate that the world around us might be more remarkable than we give it credit for.
Even a bumblebee, slipping out just in time.