How Do We Catch Sand Crabs in Mindoro - Learning from Nature

Aside from building sandcastles, we used to catch sand crabs for fun during my childhood days in our town in Occidental Mindoro. Sand crabs usually stayed in their deep holes along the sandy coastlines. One way to catch them is to dig their holes, but that takes a lot of time 

The crabs are foolish too!

It is well known, especially among the Filipinos, that crabs are selfish. The term “crab mentality” is used to describe a kind of selfish, short-sighted thinking which runs along the lines of “if I can't have it, neither can you.”

Only a few know that crabs are foolish too! That foolishness, of holding on to something dangerous, makes them easy to catch. 

Foolishness is deadly

To catch them inside their deep burrow, we use clotheslines or a small rope. We tie a piece of fishing net on one end of the rope and insert it in the crab’s hole. When we feel the crab’s claw pull in the line, we will keep on twisting the small rope and slowly pull it out of its burrow until we catch it.

All it needs to do is to let go of the other end of the rope to escape being caught, but it clawed that “something” that invades its territory, believing that it is an important fight. The crab doesn’t know that holding on to something unimportant and lifeless will cause him his life.

Nature is a great teacher on how to live our life

For the past years, I am like a sand crab. I keep on holding on to “something.” But I don’t even want to name that “something,” it has no name.    

It is hunger perhaps.

I hunger for growth and change from my old ways, from my old habits and thinking, but I keep on holding the other end of that “something,” defiantly resisting change, believing that it is an important fight.

I am a fool. Even if I already feeling the tension and the pain it is giving me on my daily affairs – crazily nurturing my frustrations, I still keep on holding on.

Maybe that “something” is “expectations.”

Yes, I guess it is “expectations.” the damn process of what may happen scares me - expectations from family, work, friends, life, career and myself all build paralysis in my mind.  Conversely, I feel frustrated when I have thoughts of expectations from these, draining my spirit and circumvents my growth, it is frustrating expecting anything. I hate it to be honest. 

Or maybe it is silence.

This silence – this silence that keeps feeding on my strength. This silence that breeds more silence, nourishes my indolence, nurtures my weakness, keeping me stagnant, forever staring at that lonely star before dawn. I am becoming weak, growing weaker still – this silence has bereft me of sense.

My soul itself gone stark, mad perhaps because I know longer acknowledge REASON. Like that foolish crab, I keep on holding to something lifeless and unimportant.  

I need to abandon all, to break silence, to kill expectations, to feel life, to end my hunger, and start living my life.