Yellow Ladybug

“You have to conform to reality. It’s the fittest that end up surviving. Get out of your head and trust the system,” is what my roommate said. 

I rolled my shoulders back as if I was actually getting ready to squeeze out of my head. “The brutal world of nature is a desolate story I am tired of hearing, but telling it is a whole other thing,” is what I responded.  

I turned away to look at my sleeping dog and continued, “The strong survive; the weak diminish… ad infinitum. But in this hopeless drabness, there are pockets in the muscle layer beneath the earth’s uterus. These pockets expand to hold untold facts with each passing decade. They are like secondary thumbprints of truer identities, a more wholesome picture. Are you catching my drift?”

But it was too late for a conversation of hope; she was already packing her gym bag. 

As if to prove my point, a yellow ladybug hopped onto the blank piece of paper in front of me. She spread her wings to display that she was not of the usual red color. She was as yellow as a golden plum. Spotless, smooth and glossy like a miniature Beetle car parked near a dollhouse. She was the same shade as a mid-March afternoon sun in Mexico.   

I grabbed my phone and shamelessly did a quick Google search, which confirmed that besides the color red, ladybugs could also be pink, white, orange and even black. She could have spots, or not. Or she may have spots that, if granted a long life, would diminish with age.  

The ancestors of this ladybug and the other uncommon ones with colors of white, pink, orange and black all had to endure something to cause them to mutate and differentiate themselves. Through the lazy human eye, they seem to be uncommon, but they can very well simply be overlooked. No sympathy there, they probably intended to be overlooked.  

Yet, always, people thought of this adorable bug as the red bug with black polka dots. It is in wearing her 60s-style red and black overcoat that she is marked as a symbol of a message from heaven, a lucky charm, or a sign of an existent or forthcoming prosperity. 

She’s like the red fairy, Flora, in sleeping beauty, the eldest, wisest and most memorable. A ladybug could wear another cape of a different color, telling of a different character, insinuating a different fate. She’d still remain a lucky charm. But rarely any of us allow her this free choice of color. 

Instead, in most of our thoughts, our ladybug is constantly in her uniform, boosting our uniform thoughts in a uniform world to soothe us and grant us comfort in conformity, rather than allowing her to exhibit how far from uniformity Nature is by finding her in all of her colors. 

“We are not doomed with the finality of simplicity, after all,” was all I ended up saying out loud. My roommate pretended to understand me with a quick nod while inching her way towards the exit of our home rather than running out of it. If only she knew what she was agreeing with … 

Beisan A. Alshafei

April 20th, 2021