if you learn to love bugs with all your heart the world will feel half as hostile and a thousand times as big
There's a sentiment I'm noticing in the tags that I'd like to address. I don't think learning to love bugs with all your heart means forcing yourself out of discomfort you have with them overnight. It's about observing a different sort of being going about its life and deliberately trying to reframe your observations through a sense of wonder and delight. It's about cultivating a positive interest and curiosity for their ecology and behaviors. It's especially about trying to uncouple the value we find in them from how 'convenient' they are to us; to face head on the part of us that wants to assign moral evil to another organism who just happens to live life in a way that is not harmonious with ours. You can love insects in this way and still recognize your own health and safety needs. We are animals living side by side within a biosphere. This is how it is, sometimes.
I think this is important to cultivate because, if you are alive at all, you are coming into conflict with countless other people and things that don't owe you an apology for their existence and needs. If you are alive at all, you are encountering countless other people and things that harmful bias and personal discomfort have made repulsive to you. This is about bugs, but its also about way more than bugs.
