There's always a chance to learn

I took this picture a few days ago. Besides the color contrasts between the blue wasp and the yellow Goldenrod, I liked it for its strangeness. In my mind, the wasps were the tigers of the insect world. They are ferocious and back down to no one. They eat everything from spiders to caterpillars. They'll attack a bee hive where they are outnumbered. But here is a wasp eating flower nectar. That's like seeing a tiger eating carrots or a Klingon eating tofu.

But then I took the time to learn a little more about what wasps eat. I thought I knew a lot about wasps because one of my degrees in college was in biology (my other degree is in electrical engineering). Also, I'd done a lot of outside reading on the insects and I enjoyed studying them. But as I read more now, I found that most adult wasps feed on nectar and pollen! They only attack other insects and spiders to feed their young. They are indeed fierce predators but they aren't the tigers of the insect world. It's thought that their ancestors may have eaten the insects and spiders they caught but over the generations have become vegetarians.

This is yet another reminder to not think I know everything. You can't check every fact and you can't put off making decisions too long but it's so important to keep learning. It's so important to keep an open mind. That's what a wasp taught me this week.

Intelligent people are always ready to learn.
Their ears are open for knowledge.

Proverbs 18:15 New Living Translation