Butterfly Love
The fritillary, a pale orange butterfly with dull black spots, fluttered and flailed in the web outside my window as the spider watched from an upper corner. A moment later, a second fritillary appeared and began darting frantically around the periphery of the web. It charged towards the web, then wheeled off, back towards it, and away again. Its dance of indecision suggested a creature suspended between the conflicting impulses of self-preservation and self-sacrifice.
Was the second butterfly the mate of the first? And did the display reflect concern? Empathy? Love? Butterfly love. Yet entomologists assure us that invertebrates do not love. They lack the complex attachments of the more highly evolved species. Their bonding has no emotional content.
But if the behavior of the second butterfly was not a demonstration of caring, why didn't it simply fly away as soon as it sensed peril? Why did it keep gravitating back towards the captured butterfly, as though wanting to rescue it?
I was torn between my own contradictory impulses. Should I just watch, dismayed, or demolish the web and liberate the butterfly? Though I knew the spider was merely fulfilling its biological imperative, I identified with the butterfly as it struggled against the lethal strands—with weak against strong, prey against predator.
Yet I am a predator. I don’t eat red meat or fowl, but I do eat fish. I don’t kill fish, but the act of consumption renders me a co-conspirator in their demise. I destroy snails in my garden. I kill fleas and ticks on my dog.
Why, then, was I disturbed at the prospect of a butterfly’s death? Was I responding not to death, but to the dying process, a reflection of my own anxieties? Or to the butterfly’s gossamer beauty? And which considerations ought to determine such life and death decisions—here and elsewhere? Aesthetics, evolutionary status, abundance, size, charm, service, entertainment value?
I don’t know. I’ve sought a philosophy which would teach me how to make peace with life’s contradictions, to cherish rather than allow them to bedevil me. Appalled by the arrogance and rapacity of Western culture, I have chosen an eclectic blend of Buddhism, Taoism, and Native American thought. Their cosmologies are disparate, yet I’m inspired by the balance they embody—between head and heart, yin and yang—and by their fierce reverence for life.
Still, facile answers elude me. What does reverence for life mean in the crucible of day-to-day existence? All inanimate stuff of the planet, according to many non-Western belief systems, is as alive as any finch or daffodil. We must destroy in order to provide food, clothing, shelter. But destroy what, and how much? Which animals? Which plants?
In many Native Americans traditions, one takes from the earth only with a profound sense of gratitude, and always gives back to it. When picking herbs to use medicinally or ceremonially, the Mohawks never remove the largest or healthiest members—those that are essential to the perpetuation of the plant community. And when possible they sow seeds back into the ground from which they were removed. My existence affects the natural world. I can only hope to affect it as consciously and tenderly.
The second butterfly seemed to understand that there was a critical line. If crossed, there would be no crossing back. Ultimately, it was unwilling to take that final step. And I, too, was unwilling to interfere. My role wasn’t to judge but to acknowledge, with awe, the spider as vital a player as the butterfly in the cosmic drama.
Despite my biases. Despite my unease. Despite my butterfly love.
©Lucy Aron, Cune Press 1997
