Tasting the nectar of life

I read an opinion essay about the hardship that Vladimir Nabokov--and his wife, Vera Slonim--went through--from the communist revolution to Hitler, which finally brought them to America.  He was a refugee and an immigrant more than once in his life.  And, yet, he prospered, leaving his mark on humanity in ways most of us are incapable of.

Nabokov was also an expert on butterflies.  A lepidopterist.

In biology, when we studied about the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly, I had a tough time believing and imagining a wriggly worm becoming a colorful butterfly.  How magical, I thought.

These days, urban life means that kids and adults rarely ever encounter butterflies.  Such is life that we call progress!

The Indian poet-mystic Rabindranath Tagore had a simple and yet profound poem in which he referred to the butterfly, in his Poems on Time.  Well, it is not really about the butterfly itself, as you can tell:

The butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough.

Time is a wealth of change,
but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time
like dew on the tip of a leaf.

May you, too, have enough wealthy moments in your life!