every living thing

sunday and it's rain. i stand in front of the terrace door, looking out to the garden, this garden of february, this garden of trees without leafs and flowers hibernating yet. but the first messengers of life are there already: a first flower opening. a first bee. a first butterfly.

the butterfly, it takes me back to last summer, to this photo i took there. it's the same, i think. the same butterfly. or rather: the same kind of butterfly. butterflies don't fly through winter. they fade when the frost comes, leaving only their memory, and some little butterfly eggs.

the search of the butterfly photo takes me to another page, one with a quote about struggle. i wanted to copy it right away, then forgot. all i remember is that it's from Rilke. and starts with "every little thing." i type the words into google. like magic, a second later, the quote appears, in an extended version, what that moves on from struggle to aloneness, the theme of this month's philosophy cafe.

"People have, with the help of so many conventions, resolved everything the easy way, on the easiest side of easy. But it is clear that we must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance. We can be sure of very little, but the need to court struggle is a surety that will not leave us. It is good to be lonely, for being alone is not easy. The fact that something is difficult must be one more reason to do it."
- from Letters to a Young Poet

thank you, butterfly.