It’s funny how adults could say something out of frustration, and you could see what’s profound in it. I can almost guarantee that my parents have forgotten this moment, but it was something special for me. All because I didn’t interpret the moment my Dad expected me to. Small things in life turn out to be deeper than we often think. Anyways, here goes the story.

I was in the kitchen with me Dad who was making sandwiches, I don’t think we had a toaster back then so it wouldn’t have been toast. Either one slice of fresh bread with something on top or sandwiches. This is a bit beside the point. Dad asked me what I wanted, and I answered:

“peanut butter… no vegemite… no peanut butter, no, vegemite!”- something like that.

Dad was probably frantically switching between the peanut butter and vegemite jars as I ordered. Flustered, he snapped:

“Don’t change your mind too much”

Dad was trying to successfully butter some bread, meanwhile he had taught me an important life lesson. I didn’t take this sentence into context, but applied it to life in general. If you want to get somewhere in life, stick with a plan. Change only if it’s necessary. And don’t be afraid to change if it is.

In the autumn is would get progressively colder, and the air would become too cold for the small that only live in the summer. They were attracted to the heat that apartments provided and made their way into the windows, invading our house. This was one of my favourite times of years. My Dad hated it, all of these bugs crawling in and living in our house. I didn’t understand him in this matter in the least when I was little. They speckled the ceiling bringing and bright colour to the pale ceiling. Dad was upset because eventually dropped and he would have to sweep up their tiny dotted corpses. Because we lived in an apartment, there wasn’t as much space and balconies would get clogged with storage. It was quite cosy there, but you could find the shells of ladybugs in the middle of winter that never got swept up.

 I didn’t look at this from Dad’s perspective, where they seemed like an invasive species that just made a mess. I looked at it from the bugs. They were doomed to freeze to death and so they came to our house hoping that we’d be welcoming enough because they had no other choice. There were no leaves or other bugs to munch on outside. And if they didn’t find food inside, then they would die slowly from a lack or food. Soon enough I was transforming shoe boxes into ladybug homes, trying to find them a bit of food. I hoped that if I could keep them alive for long enough, then they could go on living in the spring. Unfortunately, the bugs rarely stayed, I couldn’t find them food, there were to many, and Russian winter is just too long. Actually, after a while they’d stay, but then get thrown away. I made a resolution to rescue them in the next year, but it never worked out.

Ladybugs are after all predators and are not particularly interested in breadcrumbs. But perhaps we can learn something from ladybugs. They are predators, and there were many of them in our home, yet they cooperated, never eating each other. If they were poisonous this would really ruin my analogy. But they wouldn’t be poisonous to themselves, would they. But anyways, even in hard times, they wouldn’t compromise their conscience and valued the life of their fellow ladybugs as much as their own. They’d never hunt the other ladybugs, even if they were dying of hunger and destined to be swept up into a dustpan. I never remember seeing one ladybug eat another (If I had I’d probably remember). People are also capable of living their neighbours like this, looking out for each other as a whole when times get tough. To love their neighbours as themselves. And if we avoid picking on our enemies, does that really deserve any merit?

Also, something funny: in Russian the name for a ladybug literally translates to "God's cow". Its kind of strange, (I mean, the spots make sense) but we get the name ladybug or ladybird from "Our Lady's bug/bird" - referring to Mary. Because ladybugs eat other bugs that eat crops. So ladybugs save the crops. That makes them a blessing.