On Cicadas And Our Own Temporary Lives

I’m not from the East Coast originally. Having grown up in the Midwest I’d never seen a cicada before moving here (or if I had I didn’t know it and they certainly weren’t in such overwhelming numbers as what I’m witnessing now!) Waking up in the morning, the cacophony that hits my ears as I step outside with coffee cup in hand is something totally alien to me…on many levels. Indeed, the noise resembles not so much an organic mix as some mechanical sound effect lifted right from a 1950s sci-fi alien invasion film. 

Personally I’m fascinated by what’s happening. I’ve never interacted so closely with a life form so abundant, so in my face, and yet so non-threatening, helpless, peaceful, and innocent in its benevolence. I won’t go so far as to declare that cicadas are “cute.” After all, as I alluded above, they may as well be from another planet given how utterly bizarre they are to us. But they are pretty cool in their own way.  (Thank God insects are small…I think even a ladybug would lose its nursery rhyme appeal if it grew to be five feet tall!)

Because of how strange they are, at first these six-legged black almonds with wings and beady red eyes hoisting themselves up onto trees and walls or whizzing through the air repelled me. But I’ve taken a more philosophical approach to them as of late. I’ve come to embrace what is happening and actually extract some life lessons from this story unfolding all around us. How many of us have considered the cicadas' terminal one-month binge in the sunlight after a seventeen year hiatus of isolation and subterranean darkness, and asked: “What’s the point?” I can’t answer that directly. If you believe in God as I do I you offer it up as a mystery and part of a master plan beyond our comprehension. To an atheist perhaps there is no plan per se, other than to provide a smorgasbord for the rest of the animals who live more active and seemingly purposeful lives.  

But for me, what is intriguing, what compels me to stand at eye level to branches and just observe them for long stretches at a time as they crawl, flail their wings and hum their sonorous mating call—like I’m some Jane Goodall for bugs—is not just that they are different. What really captivates me is that they are indifferent.   They are indifferent to us, indifferent to the dangers they face, indifferent to the fact that their lives are soon to come to an end. That this time next month they will all be dead. Until that day of reckoning, though, they go about their routines utterly unconcerned and perhaps even unaware especially of the human beings who so arrogantly claim to be lords of the planet just because we have the capacity to destroy it. Though not the brightest of creatures, relying on sheer numbers rather than cunning for survival, there is something of the sublime in the cicadas’ sudden appearance en masse.

Dr. Steven Jay Gould, the late Harvard professor of evolutionary biology and other disciplines offered that our world belongs to the littlest of creatures who in their hundreds of billions inhabit the vast empty spaces between people (and within us): bacteria, protozoa, insects. In fact he offered “we live not in the age of man but the age of bacteria.” If cicadas are creatures geometrically larger and far less numerous, I think they do nonetheless serve as a lesson in humility…a reminder of our real place in this world. And so when I hear the steady calling of their mating song, often in decibels so high I must raise my voice to be heard in conversation, I’m reminded not of their smallness, but ours. 

When you think about it what do we do that is much different? We live for seventeen years or so in childhood, bloom into (admittedly longer) adulthood, have children of our own, grow old and die, and the cycle repeats. That during our life journey to the unavoidable grave, we create, play, love, build and destroy, maybe gives our lives a measure of meaningfulness above a cicada’s by our standards. But I still wonder, as prompted by our new friends, what is it all about? 

This is yet another question I cannot answer. But I can say that watching the life cycle unfolding in real time before me, I’ve thought about it more. Some of them succeed in their mission and mate. Many fail and are eaten, squashed or simply die unfulfilled in their quest. In the cicadas’ world there are winners and losers. That is as much an unavoidable fact of life for humanity as for any species. Perhaps as a society we can learn something from that as we attempt in vain to artificially eliminate the latter category, but that is another discussion.

As for my personal life, I hope the reflections prompted by our temporary visitors encourage me to at least try to lead a fuller existence, knowing that, like the little cicada, my time here above ground is very limited. Certainly some re-prioritizing is in order. I may never apprehend the “meaning of life” but I can at least vow to make the most of whatever life I am living while I am living it. 

I’m not going to miss the cicadas when they’re gone. But I will look back on them with a modicum of gratitude for at least opening my eyes to life’s realities…and my own mortality. Like them, we are born, we live, we try to achieve something during our little window of animation, and then we die. But unlike them we have the capacity to choose how we spend this limited time and try to make for ourselves and those around us a more fulfilling, honorable, and happy life.

Perhaps then, for the cicadas, the ultimate meaning of their lives is to give meaning to ours. If I am still above ground in the sunlight seventeen years from now, I’ll be reminded of this all over again. I just hope I don’t forget what they have to teach me in the meantime.