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It’s Just a Butterfly
Picture this.
A group of men are working outside, loading furniture into a pickup truck. A monarch butterfly flits past, dips down to check out the truck, then disappears into the bushes.
“I wonder what that means?” asks one of several women standing nearby.
“Um... I think it means a butterfly just flew past,” answers another woman (who happens to be one of my clients).
The other women in the group found this a remarkably prosaic, not to say unimaginative, way of looking at things. However, as my client said when telling me the story, “What in the world could be more profoundly meaningful than the absolute miracle of a monarch butterfly? What more meaning could anything have than the completely astonishing fact of its existence — of the wholeness of its existence?”
When you look for some sort of meaning in the things you see or the things that happen to you, you blind yourself to the miracle of the simply ordinary, and to the beauty that’s all around.
Even more than that, you externalize your understanding of who you are and what’s happening to you. You create a sense of victimhood (as when that same client felt personally picked-on when just-cut roses wilted in their vase), a sense of being at the mercy of arbitrary and whimsical forces. Taken further, you’ll often find yourself believing that if you could just figure out the meaning of what’s happening around you and to you, then you could somehow control or affect your circumstances.
What if there is no meaning? What if everything simply is exactly what it is, no more and certainly no less? How would that change your experience of life?
Seeing the world as it is, without an overlay of struggle to find meaning and reasons, is profoundly liberating — and very beautiful. Try these pointers to release yourself from your quest for meaning.
Get Distracted
Notice everything around you. Broaden your perspective. Turn it upside down. Don’t dwell on anything; keep noticing what’s in motion, new sounds, a splash of light.
Look at things through the corners of your eyes, upside down, reflected in the window or in a water droplet. Notice the tiny spiderwebs in the grass and the ways jet trails interlock and disperse in the sky.
There’s So Much!
Hear — really hear — what you hear. How many sounds can you hear right this moment? Can you hear the dull hum of traffic? Is there an airplane overhead? Is someone mowing the lawn? How many birds can you hear? Is the breeze rustling the trees?
What do you smell? Are there traces of last night’s dinner in the air? Is a rose blooming on your desk? Has it rained — can you smell the dampness of the earth? How about the scent of your soap on your skin, your shampoo in your hair?
Look up from reading this article. What’s in the periphery of your vision? How many brilliant colors are all around you? What is the play of light doing to what you see?
What’s under your fingertips? Can you feel the texture of what you’re sitting on, and of the surface under your feet? How does the air feel against your skin?
Don’t Label
See, hear, smell, touch everything without putting a label on anything. Whatever you see around you or out the window — just look at it, experience its shape, color, and visual texture, without naming it or judging it.
See with a Child’s Eyes
Young children aren’t interested in the meanings of what they see and experience. Instead, they’re simply captivated and astonished in each moment by what’s before them.
When you allow something to just be exactly what it is, you’ll find yourself really appreciating it, in ways you never did before. And as my client said, what could be more miraculous and astonishing than that?
“Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864, American novelist and short-story author.
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