The Cicadas Still Sing Every Summer, but They're Never the Same Voices

On my way downstairs to the gym today, I came across two cicadas.

The first was green, lying motionless on the concrete.

I picked it up and placed it on a nearby tree.

Almost immediately, it inserted its mouthparts into the bark and began feeding on the sap.

It wasn't dead.

Just exhausted.

A few steps later, I found another one.

It had just emerged from its shell, but the transformation hadn't gone well.

One wing was still stuck to the old exoskeleton, crumpled tightly together no matter how hard it struggled.

I carefully separated the wing from the shell, trying not to damage it, then found a little water, hoping the wing might still unfold.

It was already too late.

I tried placing it on several different trees.

Each time, it managed to climb only a few inches before slipping back to the ground and ending up on its back, exhausted.

I didn't leave.

I sat beside it, waited for it to recover, then gently placed it back on the trunk.

It fell.

I lifted it back up.

It fell again.

So I lifted it again.

I don't know how long we repeated this.

Eventually, it found its grip.

It didn't rush upward.

It simply climbed—

one tiny step at a time.

At that moment, a line from Jurassic Park suddenly came back to me:

Life finds a way.

Later, I looked up the life cycle of a cicada.

They spend three to five years underground.

The part of life they spend in sunlight lasts only a single summer.

Medical training teaches us to think about life through the lens of species.

A failed emergence means no reproduction.

From the perspective of natural selection, this cicada would likely never pass on its genes.

But sitting beneath that tree, watching it struggle upward, I realized that a species and an individual are two very different ways of looking at life.

Natural selection cares about continuation.

Life itself may care only about having been lived.

Even if this cicada never leaves behind its DNA,

it still climbed out of the darkness.

It still held onto a tree.

It still felt the summer wind.

And it still heard the song that belonged to its own brief season.

I eventually continued on to the gym.

Before I left, I looked back one last time.

It was still climbing.

Slowly.

But climbing.