I heard a 'zap' tonight.

The teeny 'tink' of something tapping a ceramic plate came from the corner of my living room. A slight shadow was cast upon the ceiling and then a tiny tuft of smoke. Seconds later, the undeniable scent of burning flesh. The whole thing was truly bizarre, and over as quickly as it started.

See, I have a large halogen lamp in my living room. Apparently as I was enjoying the sound of the rain outside my apartment with the screen door cracked, a bug found its way in my apartment and stayed out of my sight. Many hours later, I was working on replying to some business emails when the bug found my lamp, freaked out, twitched in reaction to the intense heat, died, hit the ceramic base of the lamp just under the bulb and began to burn.

I fired up the ceiling fan to clear the odor and shot the charred corpse from my lamp with some compressed air. I suppose for at least a single fleeting moment in that young bug's life, the appeal of a 5,500-degree tungsten filament was just too sexy to ignore. Maybe the little guy had nothing else to live for. Maybe he passionately threw himself into the lamplight to prove a point. The tragedy is that with no apparent suicide note, we may never know for certain.

It was crazy too, since checking out the condition of the smelly, burning bug inside the brightly-lit halogen lamp was exactly what I decided to do. I stood on the couch awkwardly, reminding myself as I asceneded about avoiding direct contact with the hot, bright bulb. "Look away, Brian," I told myself before I even positioned my head near the top of the funeral pyre.

Despite all of my warnings, I glared into the damned thing trying to figure out what had happened. This entire event occurred about 35 minutes ago and I am just now regaining my vision. I find myself wondering who was dumber in that short-lived moment- the bug for its instinctive attraction to light, or me for my instinctive attraction to bearing witness to said disaster and blinding myself in the process.

In taking these moments to blindly touch-type my way across the keyboard, I can say with certainty that this wasn't the stupidest thing I have ever done. Nope. On reflection, staring into a 500-watt halogen lamp wouldn't even rank among my top 100. It did get me wondering though, how many times we ignore our better judgement in life.

How many times do we embrace instant gratification at the expense of our experience and wisdom? Isn't it a quirky thing to forsake the one thing we know to be wise in favor of something we know to be foolish?

It makes me wonder if bugs know about or somehow expect an untimely death when a lamp illuminates the darkness and they suit-up for their final hurrah. Are Japanese beetles kin to the notorious kamikaze pilots of Japan? Maybe they have a party for each other before they ship out of the hive. Who knows? Anything is possible.

Really, since I can't see the television or continue reading my email, I am forced to wonder how ridiculous it is to mock a bug for its ingrained directive to find something bright and die near it when I cannot ignore my own cautionary conscience. If someone comforted you by saying "you will do fine as long as you don't look down," how would you react?

Quick! Don't think about a snake un-hinging its jaw to swallow a robin's egg. No matter what, don't imagine it gagging down the slimey light blue orb inside of a freshly-made bird's nest. See? We're just moths to a flame ourselves.

If you're worried about my turning this experience into an analogy suitable for a reflection of one of life's lessons, put your mind at ease. I did that several paragraphs ago. Now, it's just a simple bug story written by a (temporarily) blind man. I suppose I can sum this brain fart up by stating my intention to listen more carefully (at least in part) to the inner Brian. He's been in there shouting "don't." "stop." "no." And for the better part of the last five years, I have ignored him. Using my conscience (sometimes) as a guide, I have taken many chances and learned more than any course could teach me. Taking calculated risks is how we grow, and we can all learn from that, right?

Just keep an eye out for burning tungsten out there. I hear it can be a bitch!