In "The Death of the Moth," what does Woolf see in the moth fluttering at the window?

In "The Death of the Moth," Woolf sees an ordinary day moth fluttering at her window. Despite the fact that it is a completely ordinary creature, the moth arrests Woolf's attention. He flies from one corner of the window pane to the other with an intensity that rivets her. In fact, he seems to represent life itself. As Woolf writes:

It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking...

In "The Death of the Moth," Woolf sees an ordinary day moth fluttering at her window. Despite the fact that it is a completely ordinary creature, the moth arrests Woolf's attention. He flies from one corner of the window pane to the other with an intensity that rivets her. In fact, he seems to represent life itself. As Woolf writes:

It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show us the true nature of life. 

The moth reminds Woolf that life, no matter how insignificant, matters. As Woolf watches the moth struggle against its impending death, she recognizes it as a representation, stripped bare, of the fundamental struggle for existence that human beings share. No matter how ordinary, insignificant or forgotten our existence might be, a force throbs in us while we are living, just as in the moth. 

Woolf admires the moth's monumental struggle to stay alive. It prevails for a moment, and Woolf celebrates its "minute ... triumph" over death. In the end, however, the moth dies, and Woolf recognizes that death will take us all. At the same time, it is the struggle to stay alive, no matter how briefly, and to live life to its fullest, even if that only involves flying from one end of a windowpane to another, that is important. Woolf feels an affinity with the moth, for the moth is all of us: "He was little or nothing but life."