Magnifying glass

My daughter loves bugs.. She know so many odd details about bugs. She can explain the category of assassin beetles in a way that could actually make you like them. She is fascinated and speaks with such passion, that it is contagious.
Whenever one of my children has a passion for something, I do my best to create an educational opportunity. My daughter has tweezers, books, insect encyclopedias, a microscope, slides and a magnifying glass. She uses all of these things to learn more about bugs.
I saw her using the magnifying glass to examine every detail of a wheelbug a couple of weeks ago. I watched as she checked the number of legs, antennae, and other special characteristics that would help her to find this creatures name in her book. This bug is pretty interesting. It looks like it has a hard shell mohawk. It has a long straw like thing in the front. I also noticed that each part of this bug has a purpose. Every single microscopic detail has meaning. The long straw is actually a big part of how it came to fall into the assassin beetle category.
I'm always so intent on stepping back. I pride myself on being able to separate myself and see things from a distance. This is a skill I have learned to protect myself from sheer lunacy. I do it because sometimes it is too painful to see things from just one viewpoint. Often, stepping back reduces the madness. I cannot simply say, WHY?
Often, I see life as if people are looking through the magnifying glass trying to figure out from just the shape of that one leg, what the bug eats, where it lives, how long it might live. Yes, our paleontologist friends are making their best guesses about just one piece of the puzzle, but if we have the entire bug, and we are using a magnifying glass, we have an obligation to ourselves to use the magnifying glass properly. Just because it has mohawk, does not make the bug a rock star in the insect world. What a ridiculous assumption. Or perhaps if we simply compared that straw like apparatus to that of a butterfly, we would probably assume that this creature also drinks nectar from flowers. We would be mistaken. If we were trying to colonize the creatures, we would be mistaken enough to kill them.
My point is that if something is worth checking out, it is worth very careful and mindful scrutiny. If there is no possible way to do that, or to understand the information, perhaps it is wise to zoom out until the focus becomes more clear. There is beauty in examination, but unfortunately, examining something too closely and not thoroughly enough can lead to incorrect assumptions.
Sometimes we are simply not to know. This is the hardest of all for me to admit. I like answers. I find comfort in them. I think most of us do. Be wary of the unexamined life. I think we must examine ourselves more closely before anything else.
Do we simply ingest? Do we serve a purpose? The wheelbug eats garden pest bugs such as aphids. What are our defenses? Do we use them unnecessarily? Do I use them enough? The wheelbug has the ability to excrete a very stinky substance. Perhaps if it had, instead of trustingly climbing into a container, it would still be alive. What is my fate? Am I to live a long life? I wonder if the wheelbug knows that it will die before it has snowed. Each of us has unique qualities.. Some are more like butterflies, some have much more in common with the wheelbug. The wheelbug survives by injecting its prey and then waiting. The injection liquifies the prey from the inside, so that the wheelbug can eat through its "straw". It is what it is. But now that I know, I will try to avoid them as I do not want the stinky substance on me.
I have examined enough about myself to know that I believe there are human counterparts to the wheelbug. There are those who inject the poison and wait and then feed later. I know for myself, I do not want the stink on me, so I try to avoid them.