Inviting the Butterfly Effect.

Tonight’s visitor to my kitchen floor is a woodlouse. I first saw it wandering aimlessly around just as the beetle was a couple of nights ago, only the woodlouse appeared to be drunk. It was definitely unsteady on its feet and I had the impression that it was dying. It’s still there now, immobile, so it probably was.

And there was a moth on the roof of my car this afternoon. It, too, was immobile, but moved just a little when I touched it. The air temperature being a little low by the standards to which I assumed a moth of that sort would normally be accustomed, I felt a pang of pity for the poor little thing and wondered whether I should intervene in its destiny.

I considered, as one does, the possibility of unforeseeable ramifications when taking a hand in the workings of fate – whether it is better to intervene, or to pass on and allow fate, or nature, or whatever forces order the course of natural affairs to have their way.

My habitual compassion – which might alternatively be termed sentimentality – finally settled the matter. I picked it up carefully and placed it at the bottom of a pile of garden cuttings which are already beginning to compost down. I reasoned (if that’s the appropriate word) that if the moth was going to die, it would be more comfortable doing so in a warm place. The moth crawled into the pile and the deed was done. And now I live with the possibility that I might have been complicit in engendering the rise of a devastating typhoon somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean. The question of karmic balancing hardly bears the weight of consideration.