The Lowe-Down

Apparently, Vegemite is still popular. I discovered this recently when I asked a group of teenagers to vote on their favorite toast spread. I stuck with the traditional options – Vegemite, Peanut Butter, Jam and Honey – and was surprised when Vegemite came out on top. Not that it was a particularly accurate or robust survey. A quick show of hands and a rough estimate without counting was all I could manage. Which is lucky, really, because what I wanted to talk about was honey!

Vegemite has its niche place in the history of spreads, but you can’t go past honey for longevity. If you went back in history and put this same choice, honey is the only item of the four that would make sense to the likes of Shakespeare, Genghis Khan, Muhammad, Cleopatra, Queen Esther, Tutankhamun or Abraham. Honey has been around for a long time! Which makes me wonder about the first human to say, “I bet there is something really delicious in the home of those flying insects – we should eat it!” Surely that first attempt did not go well?
But I digress. Honey is amazing. Here are a few fun facts about honey:

• It never goes off! They have found honey thousands of years old in ancient Egyptian tombs that was still good!
• It is completely unprocessed.
• The way it is made is incredible – bees collect nectar from flowers then they pass the nectar on to their colleagues in the hive, who pass it around from bee to bee until it’s digested enough to be stored. This takes up to twenty minutes. When it’s ready, they put it in the cells of the honeycomb and gradually raise its sugar content by evaporating the water, using the heat of their bodies, and continually flapping their wings to keep the air circulating. When the sugar level is high enough to ensure that the honey won’t ferment, they seal the cell with wax and move on to the next one.
• Honey has anti-bacterial and anti-septic benefits that are amazingly effective.
• It is also used in beauty treatments for its moisturizing qualities.
• Cats cannot taste honey because they lack the taste receptors to do so (which possibly explains why some cats look permanently annoyed!)

As well as being an amazing substance, honey has proven to be a versatile component of our language. Victor Hugo wrote, “Life is the flower for which love is the honey” while William Golding declares, “Man produces evil as a bee produces honey”. Nietzsche waxes lyrical with this observation, “Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.” The Bible uses honey as a metaphor in various ways, including comparing kind words to honey. Proverbs 16:24 suggests that “Kind words are like honey—they cheer you up and make you feel strong.”

I was reflecting on this idea of kind words being like honey and it occurred to me that the process of making honey could also reflect a great process for becoming someone who readily has kind words to share. The analogy might be a bit of a stretch but here it is:

The first thing bees do is go out into the world and gather nectar from flowers. In the same way, we can gain a lot by seeking out things of wonder and beauty in the world. It is very easy to get stuck in depressing news feeds and to focus on all that is wrong in our world. Making the effort to look for and to recognize beauty, wonder and awe in the world helps to balance this tendency. It might be in the magic of the natural world, the brilliance of human design or the best aspects of human nature. Wherever we find it we should gather it like nectar.

The next thing bees do is share the nectar with others. This is an easy parallel. As well as appreciating things of wonder and beauty in the world, we should get into the habit of sharing them. Talking about good things becomes a habit (as does complaining) and we are more likely to speak kindly if we are in the habit of speaking about positive things. I say this as a habitual cynic who frequently needs to be reminded to acknowledge the positives as well as point out the negatives. Some habits can be hard to break.

The last part of the honey making process is the refinement and storage of the nectar. For us, this is a bit like managing our own self-talk. Self-talk is the endless stream of unspoken thoughts that run through your head. These automatic thoughts can be positive or negative. Just as bees refine the nectar by evaporating the water from it, so too can we refine our own thinking by filtering off the negative thoughts and focusing on the positives. If the thoughts that run through your head are mostly negative, your outlook on life is more likely pessimistic. If your thoughts are mostly positive, you’re likely an optimist — someone who practices positive thinking. And as we have already observed, kind words will come more easily if our mindset is already directed towards the good.

This year you will have 366 opportunities to choose what you have for breakfast, including which spread to put on your toast. You will also have countless more moments where you have a choice about how you speak to other people. You will be well equipped to make the most of these moments if you have become, as Nietzsche put it, “honey gatherers of the mind.” You may not choose to have honey for breakfast, but can I encourage you to choose kind words when you speak – because if you think honey is impressive, you should see what speaking kindly can do for someone!

May you also hear kind words and be cheered and strengthened by them.