not a fly

Earlier today, I was sitting in my room, barefoot as usual, when I felt a fly crawling on my foot. Without looking down, or even having full awareness of what I was doing, I used my other foot to brush away the fly. As I did so, though, suddenly my awareness was on what I was doing, and the reason was simple: the feel, to my foot that was doing the brushing, was not as expected. There was something not quite right about it. It didn't feel like a fly. And that feeling, of something being not quite as expected, is what interrupted my absentmindedness. That's what brought my attention to what I was actually doing. With that interruption, as it were, I became present.

I looked down and saw that the fly was, indeed, not a fly. It was a ladybird. And seeing the ladybird, quite a telling thought popped into my mind. It was: I hope I haven't hurt the ladybird. I hope I haven't damaged it. Now when I brush a fly aside, I don't usually have any intention to hurt the fly. But really I realise I don't really care that much if I do hurt a fly. Whereas I do care if I hurt a ladybird. So basically I am valuing a ladybird more than a fly. I have a prejudice. And that is really how we so often go through life, caring about some things and not about others, caring about some people and not about others, some species of animal, but not others.

These are all our prejudices. We have prejudged things. Ladybirds are good, flies are bad. There's no particular reason why I should feel that. I guess when flies are buzzing around, I tend to feel slightly irritated by them. Whereas ladybirds don't buzz so much, and usually there are fewer ladybirds. Perhaps the main reason though is I just find ladybirds more pretty to look at. It's so superficial, isn't it? How pretty something is, to our eyes, determines how much care we take. If we are honest, we really are quite trivial in our behaviour.

Yes, this was highlighted to me by this little incident, of when a fly was not a fly, but a ladybird. And also, it reminded me how often I am being absentminded, without even noticing. I guess that's the definition of absentmindedness. But I wonder how rarely am I snapped out of that absentmindedness – a beautiful and quite humbling lesson, so thank you, ladybird, and thank you to the flies too.