The larvae of Sandalus petrophya burrow underground and attach to living cicada nymphs, feeding on them slowly across years while the host remains alive. This is not opportunism. This is a deliberate, sustained relationship with a source of sustenance that the larva has chosen precisely, then committed to completely. You work the same way. When you attach to something, a problem, a person, a project, you do not dabble. You go underground with it.

Sandalus larvae are almost never seen. They conduct the entire arc of their development in darkness, beneath the soil, invisible to every observer above ground. The work happens, thoroughly and continuously, with zero surface evidence until the adult finally emerges. You process in private. You do not perform your thinking, your grief, your planning, or your preparation. People around you register the outputs and miss the years of unseen work that produced them. The specific cost of this is that credit rarely attaches to you in real time, only in retrospect, when the emergence is undeniable.

For over a century, scientists could not confirm what Sandalus larvae actually did underground because direct observation required excavating burrow systems that took years to form. The ecosystem held this beetle the whole time, even without knowing what role it played. Cicada populations carry the pressure of this parasitism whether the relationship is understood or catalogued. The people and systems around you carry your influence the same way. Your absence from a room, a team, a conversation does not produce neutral silence. It produces a gap that operates on things. You are the variable people adjust to without naming you as the variable.