HAPPINESS IS LIKE A BUTTERFLY

RESTING BUTTERFLY I

RESTING BUTTERFLY II

If you Google “Happiness” on the internet, which is where I get a lot of my information these days, you will quickly find a quote which folks have used in various forms from Henry David Thoreau.  Thoreau has written that “Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”

Different Native American tribes interpret butterflies in their own way, but generally, they're thought to represent change and transformation, comfort, hope and joy. 

 I remember chasing after Swallowtail butterflies on their annual migrations and just when you get close enough, they casually move along on the summer breeze.  I suspect there are childhood memories of many adults doing the same thing and learning the same lesson.  And if we’ve run the gauntlet of life on this planet for enough years, it’s very easy to relate that experience to the concept of happiness that also can be very elusive. 

Our culture considers the path to happiness strewn with all imaginable sorts of worldly stuff which the Mad Men of Madison Avenue subliminally and not so subliminally barrage us with over the course of almost every waking hour on the planet. One of Best Buy’s ads said it all; “I want it all and I want it now!”  We’re definitely an “instant gratification” society.  Don Draper of the 1960’s Mad Men advertising series wrapped things up neatly when he made a pitch to a CEO for their business; “What is happiness?  It’s the moment before we need more happiness.”  Advertisers and salespersons know that looking for happiness in all the wrong worldly places can be very short lived!

But if we simply go about our life following the greatest commandment which Jesus proclaimed of loving our creator and our brothers and sisters, the butterfly will glide in and sit on our shoulder.  We can experience a lasting happiness in life when we help someone who has no possibility of returning the favor.  If we do something for someone and expect something in return, we’re doing business!  This may bring a temporary happiness, but not the internal joy that has lasting power in our life.

We will face difficult circumstances in the course of a life that are beyond our control with one exception—how we respond.  And we should be careful not to confuse temporary, external circumstance, happiness with eternal, internal, joy that reveals which gods we worship in life.  We were created to be forever joyful which I consider to be a more informed extension of happiness that will dwell peacefully in our heart.

LOOKING AT LIFE FROM BOTH SIDES

CLOUDS, ICE CREAM CASTLES AND GRAMMYS

I’ve always been mesmerized by Joni Mitchell’s 1969 song Both Sides Now which she wrote at 21.  It was introduced in her second album Clouds and has become her best known song.  But I was uncertain about watching her perform her poetic lyrics last Sunday at the Grammys while sitting in a living room chair sixty years later.  The longer I watched and listened, however, the message held new meaning for me as we are both now close in age and have experienced both sides of a life well lived. 

 

It seems that Joni found the inspiration for the song while sitting at the window seat in an airplane and noticing the flip side of clouds, as we’re the first generation to see from that perspective.  She observed that she had always saw them as beautiful ice cream castles from below, but also concluded that they can block the sun while raining and snowing on everyone.  By this time, she had fought and won a struggle with polio at age nine, the “win and lose” of life, and given up her baby daughter at 20 that she had with a fellow student that wasn’t ready for parenthood, the “give and take” of love.  Clouds got in the way.  I too have observed the dark, menacing, underbelly of thick clouds only to discover beautiful skyscapes on the other side once the plane gains altitude and breaks through to the other side.

 

Joni continues the dichotomy observing that “old friends shake their heads and say I’ve changed, but ‘something’s lost and something’s gained’ in living every day.”  She finally concedes that “I really don’t know life at all.”  But today at age 80 she has the advantage of reflecting back from the other side of life with the wisdom of age and the writings of those who have come before us.  We all have the succinct words from authors like M. Scott Peck that “Life is difficult” and Robert Frost who summed up everything he learned about life in three words, “It goes on.”     

 

 

COWBOY WISDOM

 

Gore Creek, Vail, Colorado

Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t never gonna happen anyway.

Silence is sometimes the best answer.

Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.

Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.

Most times, it just gets down to common sense, which ain’t so common.

If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around.

Live simply.  Love generously.  Care deeply.  Speak kindly.  Leave the rest to God.

Live a good, honorable life.  Then when you think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time!

Always drink upstream from the herd.

 “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.”  --Edward Abbey

That final bit of wisdom prompted me to think way back and enjoy a memory a second time.  Early in our marriage, my wife Karen and I enjoyed driving west on I-70 on a summer vacation from Kansas City to Denver, Colorado and the colorful Rocky Mountains.  Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado are flat land cattle pastures and waving wheat fields with panoramic skies that wrap 360 degrees and provide endless skyscapes.  But once you approach Denver, what seems to be lowering dark clouds on the horizon become in focus as towering mountain ranges.

We two city folk had driven up a rather remote mountain trail on a subsequent July afternoon and happened upon a pure Rocky Mountain stream that was calmly moving the opposite direction alongside our vehicle.  It was obviously being fed by springs and what little snow melt still remained on the shady areas among the pine trees.  The temperature was hot in the bright sunshine and we hadn’t packed anything for snacks or drinks on this little adventure. 

As we approached the summit of the trail, we stopped and ventured out into nature beside the gurgling mountain stream.  I dipped my cupped hand into the water and experienced an immediate coolness in contrast to the ambient temperature.  We knew enough about hiking to understand that there are purifying tablets which can be added to ground water in a container, but we were ill prepared for that.  So, I confidently announced that this water must be as pure as any liquid on the planet and drank in a cupped handful of the cool Coors beer Rocky Mountain spring water!

We hadn’t ventured more than a quarter mile up the trail when we saw signs indicating the trail was ending.  We soon noticed a sign that announced the presence of a camp ground ahead and an admonition not to drink the water!  I gasped and turned the car around, realizing that I had just drank water down stream from the herd!  I carefully monitored my lower intestine for about 24 hours, but thankfully never got sick.        

YOU, YOURSELF INCORPORATED

 

YOU, YOURSELF

Life isn't so much about how many times you get knocked down, 

but how many times you get back up!

  

Through everything that you will ever experience until the day you die, 

you’re going to be the only person present for every event.  

Don’t wait around for someone else to resolve life’s issues.

  

You never lose if you don’t lose the lesson and act on it!

SOUNDS THAT TOUCH THE SOUL

SOLITUDE

“Hear that lonely whippoorwill,

He sounds too blue to fly,

The midnight train is whining low”

The opening lines to the classic country song, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, by Hank Williams evokes memories of hearing that provocative sound in the very still of the night.  I remember hearing that sound as a child in bed since we lived within about a mile from a train crossing in Kansas.  The wind had to be in the right direction to hear it that far away, which made it evoke a sense of spiritual resonance.  That sound of a train whistle at major crossways can only resonate at a distance and usually late at night.  If it’s carried on a strong north wind in winter time the feeling is even more emotional.  I hadn’t heard the sound for many years after leaving home, but now I can hear it once again here at home in North Carolina.  It not only conjures up the same emotions, but also memories of my long-ago childhood.  It’s one of those extraordinary sounds that touches the soul.  And it can trigger nostalgia, remembering who we were and validating our own identity. 

That sound evoked loneliness in old Hank and obviously many others related to the lyrics.  But loneliness is a state of sadness, while solitude is a healthy state of meaningful self-reflection.  It’s a state of being alone without being lonely.  You can be lonely in a crowd, but you can’t experience solitude there. 

There are some other sounds that have the capacity to touch the solitary soul and evoke emotions of well being at the deepest level of human life.  One of the first that comes to mind is another one from my childhood of sitting on a dock and hearing the call of a distant loon over a moonlit placid Minnesota Northwoods lake.  I’ve been walking up a vanishing windrow of midwestern hedge trees hunting bob white quail and hearing their calls as they gather the covey together.  And many of us have quietly listened to the soft coo of mourning doves at daylight.  Then there’s the rhythmic song of cicadas in the trees on summer evenings while sitting with family outside on a wrap-around porch.  I’ve also been sitting on a rural river bank at sunset while the crickets and frogs serenaded all of us.  And who of us has been touched by the experience of sitting near the ocean at any time of the day apart from the noise of civilization and hearing the rhythm of the breaking waves on shore that takes us back to the first nine months of life in the watery womb?

A few other sounds that have touched my soul include the wind and ancestral spirits racing through pine needles at the ancient Mesa Verde ruins in Colorado, standing on the prairies of eastern Colorado and western Kansas and hearing the distant thunder of an approaching summer storm, and standing outside our home in central Kansas as a winter snow mixed with sleet gently falls upon frozen ground.  Distant church bells and windchimes touch my soul along with the whirring drone of an overhead airplane that slowly fades away along with all of nature on a late autumn afternoon.

It occurs to me that all of these reflective sounds that have touched deep within my soul were experienced outside in God’s creation.  Perhaps that’s why I still enjoy the solitude of being there.