Enterprise: Accidental Opportunity for Compassionate Practice

When I looked out on the balcony yesterday, I saw that someone had chucked a lit cigarette off their balcony onto mine. Irritated, as I already had enough to do, I opened the balcony door to retrieve it and was immediately nonplused by a large insect on the greyish stone tile. Then, however, I recognized that it was a Monarch butterfly, but with its wings so folded up that from a certain angle it looked more like a grasshopper.

It had been a cold night, with a temperature below freezing, and I had felt it too, having spent a fitful night, alternating between being too hot and too cold. I therefore guessed the butterfly had folded its wings so tightly in an attempt to keep in what little heat its tiny body could generate, and perhaps to protect it’s delicate wings from the frigid air. I decided to air the place out, thus providing some warm air for the butterfly, and as I got on with my many chores, I periodically checked in to see how it was doing. As it got warmer, the wings began to come up a little, but the butterfly was very unsteady on its legs in the cool breeze that was blowing.

A while later, I saw its open wings flexing and then closing again. Still later, I saw it crawling awkwardly across the stones. When it reached the metal cover on the window washer’s anchor, which must have been very cold indeed, it tried to climb up on that, perhaps trying to get more height from which to launch itself, but it was getting nowhere, and probably getting chilled again as well. I was tempted to intervene, but unsure what to do and fearful of causing further harm, and so I directed compassion towards the butterfly and resumed my work.

Then I saw it fluttering weakly and irregularly towards a neighbour’s balcony. And so, finally I gently spread out my hands to corral it, and offered a hand for it to climb up onto, thinking perhaps I could warm it up enough for it to be able to fly properly. After crawling onto the offered hand, however, maybe it realized that this warm soft something was alive, and it quickly hopped back off again. But the second time it crawled onto the proffered hand, perhaps as whatever this something was hadn’t tried to eat it or otherwise harm it, it quickly located a comfortable perch. Soon it began flexing its wings quite vigorously, and within a few minutes took off and soared like a bird, flapping strongly and quickly away. And so, I said farewell and wished it a safe journey. As I had beheld it resting on my hand and afterwards I reflected upon its frame of reference in relation to this encounter, whether or not its acceptance of this assistance was an active act of trust, and how this timely intervention began with a carelessly flicked lit cigarette!