Finding Meaning in Living Things

Hummingbirds and Cicadas

I love hummingbirds. They represent hope and resilience. I saw a hummingbird for the first time in my early forties in California. On a stressful day, I was pacing in my kitchen, overwhelmed by my to-do list. I noticed something out of the corner of my eye and glanced toward the door.

That’s when I saw it: a hummingbird flitting around the flowers and trees in our backyard, opening her slender beak to sip at the nectar deep inside a trumpet-shaped flower. It was as if she had come to introduce herself, determined for me to notice her whirring her teensy wings. I stood still, awed by this little bird’s resilience and elegance. Years later, I learned hummingbirds could represent the resilience of a neurodiverse person and their ability to persist and adapt. Since then, I started to feed hummingbirds in my backyard; they and what they meant became instrumental in my life.

On the other side of the world, on a different continent, cicadas pique my interest. Cicadas are called “Ağustos böceği” (August bugs) in Turkish. In Bodrum, they are the first sound you notice at the beach lounging under a tree or on your balcony gazing down on the valley. Their chirping sounds like a well-conducted, ongoing symphony: the sound of summer. After a while, they become a part of your day. When they are around, you know you are alive. 

One of my best friends and I were born a few days apart in August. For our fiftieth birthday, we ordered custom t-shirts with text on the front—I’m 18 years old with 32 years of experience—and decided to go on a Mediterranean cruise together. On one of the cruise’s stops, we toured Provence in southeastern France. The tour guide first took us to a chocolate store so we could taste and buy chocolate made with olive oil.  Then he took us to a house in Place des Moulins. Standing in front of a yellow building with decorative cicadas mounted on the walls, he told us the Provencial myth about these beautiful but loud creatures. According to this myth, a higher power sent cicadas to disrupt peasants’ endless siestas and encourage them to work harder. The next thing he told made us burst into laughter: the cicadas' incessant buzzing noise lured some people to sleep instead. “It’s not good to work when the cicada is singing” is a phrase from this story.

Which winged animals bring you joy? And what do they mean to you?