Column for Life: Butterflies, Messengers of Happiness | life & knowledge

2023-06-09 19:06:53

What is really important? What touches us today – and will not go away tomorrow? It’s the things that have moved us since human existence: happiness, love, family, partnership, time, stress, loneliness, farewell, grief.

BILD columnist Louis Hagen*, coming from a German-Jewish family, sought answers to the eternal questions of mankind from poets, thinkers and researchers. And found a few answers that are amazingly simple – and yet can enrich our lives.

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It fluttered around me for minutes and suddenly it was sitting on my hand: a yellow butterfly, a brimstone butterfly. In the middle of the city, by the open window on the third floor.

Don’t move, I said to myself. Please stay seated, you little piece of luck with your beautiful yellow wings. The world is on fire outside and he’s telling us something about the butterfly on his hand, some readers might think. Maybe they are right.

BILD columnist Louis Hagen

Photo: Wolf Lux

But sometimes the small is also a reflection of the big. It is almost a miracle that we still see butterflies in our country at all: In Germany, their numbers have decreased by 40 percent in recent years. The reason is over-fertilization in agriculture and a lack of habitat.

Butterflies are colorful and summery. Everyone loves them (has been studied) – unlike their nocturnal cousins, the moths.

They float from flower to flower, sucking their nectar through their delicate proboscis. They pollinate the plants so that they can reproduce. In this way they give new life, even if they themselves are usually only with us for one summer. Suddenly and unexpectedly they come to us humans and rest for a moment.

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They are called Big Ox-Eye, Little Fox, Swallowtail, Cabbage White. We associate them with sun, lightness and joy.

In Asia, the butterfly is a widespread lucky symbol for long life, luck and partnership. But the most beautiful thing that can be said about butterflies is an expression that the little creatures are not responsible for: We have “butterflies in our stomachs” when we are in love.

Even if we can’t force the big feeling – the small one sometimes comes unexpectedly: a brimstone butterfly on your hand.

_{* Louis Hagen (76) was a member of the BILD editor-in-chief for 13 years and is now a consultant at the communications agency WMP. His texts have also been published as a book and are available at koehler-mittel-shop.de.}