On one of my recent dog walks up into the foothills, I heard a bird noisily calling, presumably to let its fellows know it had found food and a lot of it. At first, I wasn’t sure where the racket was coming from, but as I stood still and looked, I recognized an old buck lying on the hillside with a bright blue California scrub jay pecking away at his head and antlers like there was no tomorrow. I had heard how birds will eat ticks and other bugs from elk antlers, but I had no idea that the symbiotic relationship could exist between mountain deer and local birds.

What struck me was the placid expression on the buck’s face despite the loud cackling and pecking. I can’t imagine that he enjoyed that bird on his head, and I doubt he understood that the bird was actually doing him a favor by eating the bugs. Maybe he got tired of resisting it, got fed up with trying to make it go away, so he just laid down to rest.

The trials of 2020 been a lot like that scrub jay, and while the year ends in just a few days, there’s no guarantee that the challenges will. We’ve been forced to confront our mortality and figure out how to work and connect with others in a meaningful way without physical presence and proximity. Sitting and letting change happen to you, around you, isn’t easy. We wish there was another way. But taking the wisdom of that old buck, we can let change do its work on us by being still in the here and now, trusting that the outcome will be better than before.