So I am sitting outside at this robotics competition for my kids and just minding my own business when a Cockroach decided to wander up and over my leg and down the other side. I suppose I should have screamed and jumped up and started hyperventilating. However, I just watched the creature carefully navigate down my pant leg into the ground and then continue in whatever course that I had interrupted.
Got me to thinking about what an amazing creature this is. Of course they are vile and disgusting, representing the dark and dank places of the world. Having said that, you do have to admire the by product of hundreds and hundreds of millions of years of evolution. This little creature now scurrying away from me, is part of a family of insects that have absolutely mastered the concept of adaptability.
Awhile ago, insecticide companies figured out a series of poisonous toxins that would all but eradicate the species of cockroaches. Highly effective, and probably still are. Unfortunately, the cockroach and all its 4,200 related cousins passed on the knowledge to its next generation to avoid the toxin. It became completely ineffective in just one or two generations of cockroaches. Then scientists came up with a brilliant idea. They would hide the toxin in sugary substances and fool the cockroaches. That worked, for another generation of the bugs, however, they quickly adapted a distaste for pure glucose as a food source. To this day, baiting methods still remain challenging as the Cockroach will figure it out and adapt rapidly.
So adaptability in the extreme is how this bug has lasted as long as it has. We could learn a lesson from this. When all is said and done, the single most important attribute that the longest living species on our planet has come up with is adaptability.
It is not strength, it is not humility, confidence, or any other of those great human attributes. The ability to adapt rapidly to changing circumstances is the best advice that your friendly neighborhood cockroaches can provide you. Just become ever increasingly resilient and be willing to adapt, adjust and change your behavior rapidly.
The way of the cockroach. If survivability were are only standard they would be the perfect creature!
Guy Reams
