Meaning: A Pollinator’s Perspective

I can think of nothing more wondrous than the act of pollination. By simply following their instincts, pollinators act as the bridge necessary to generate new life.

The world would be a wasteland without pollinators. That’s not an exaggeration. Our lives are unfathomably interconnected with the many unassuming and ubiquitous creatures who pollinate our world. We quite literally depend on their well-being, but you wouldn’t know it from how little they are cherished.

I’m talking about butterflies and bees, of course. But I’m also talking about all the humans who, simply by following their intuition, whether to help, to explore, to investigate, to create, to connect, or simply to grow, have an outsized—and  often entirely inadvertent—impact on the world.

Pollinators make life worth living. At least 75% of the world’s flowering plants rely on them. Without non-human pollinators, there would be no cheese (cows rely on crops that are pollinated by bees), chocolate, or coffee. Without human pollinators, I think the world would be similarly bleak. We wouldn’t have much art or innovation. I’d even argue we would have less love, joy, and fun.

I came up with the concept of human pollinators initially to console myself. After a series of disappointing jobs, I was offered a leadership role at an ed-tech startup that was exploding in popularity. I was hoping it would be the job that allowed me to feel like I was finally making a difference in the wider world. Then I was unceremoniously laid off, six months after I was hired. 

So I started looking for proof that I had already made a difference throughout my life and career, even if it didn’t feel like it. I wanted to believe that it was ok to wander, to experiment, and to want more. Frankly, I wanted to know it was ok to just be my complicated self. 

The best parallel I could think of for this twisty turny life I’m leading? Pollinators. 

I lost count of how many jobs I’ve had around the time I stopped counting how many men I've slept with. Suffice it to say it’s more than the years I’ve been employed. 

I didn’t plan to have this many jobs any more than I planned for men to ghost me after we slept together. But between some combination of events beyond my control and my restless curiosity (which, after many attempts to reign it in, also seems to be stubbornly out of my control), here I am, with a CV that is as incoherent as a honey bee’s flight path. 

A single honey bee will visit between 50 to 100 flowers per foraging trip, and will make up to 10 trips a day, traveling as far as five miles from their hive in search of nutrition for the rest of the hive, including nurse bees, who have the critical function of caring for new larvae until they’re able to spin their cocoon.

While foraging, their hairy bodies pick up pollen grains from the male anther of a flower and they just so happen to transfer some of it to the female stigma, which in effect fertilizes the plant, allowing the plant to produce seeds and therefore, to reproduce. Most of what we, and any animals in our diets, consume is dependent on this process, from strawberries to squash to soya beans.

The honey bee’s goal is not pollination itself, but nevertheless, that is the consequential byproduct of flying from flower to flower, up to a thousand in a day.

Honey bees helped me see that I could choose whether I saw myself as a mediocre office worker or a dazzling pollinator. I wasn’t failing to move up the corporate ladder — I was a bioluminescent beetle searching for a new source of nectar, pollinating honeysuckle and jasmine along the way. I wasn’t failing to live up to my potential — I was a Monarch on the first leg of her epic, multi-generation-long migration.

Like a bee, beetle, or butterfly, my smallest gestures add up, and I will never know their sum.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz employed butterflies to explain how a minuscule change to the starting point of his weather models resulted in anything from typhoons to clear skies. As he put it, “If the flap of a butterfly’s wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado, it can equally well be instrumental in preventing a tornado.” He thus coined the term “butterfly effect” in the 1960s, which became the foundation for chaos theory.

Butterfly effects are all around us. 

Which is not to say my life has been all butterflies and rainbows. I wish I could say that I always played the role of a valuable honey bee or that my many metamorphoses turned me into beautiful Holly Blue butterflies, but there is often a cost to following that which compels you. There were (and still are) winters to contend with and predators to face. There were times when I was the predator. Pollinators, like all things in life, are complicated. But they are necessary. 

Bats, beetles, bumble bees. All those living beings whose tiny beating bodies are so voracious they may need to visit thousands of flowers in a day. Dragonflies and midge flies. Powering entire ecosystems by simply following their instincts. Rats and rabbits. As unaware of their wider significance in the world as I am.