“Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
~Nathaniel Hawthorne
I love this quote from Hawthorne. It makes me think of carefree days of childhood spent running through grassy fields chasing butterflies. They were almost always somehow out of reach, but that didn’t make the chase any less thrilling.
I remember chasing many different sizes and colors of butterflies, and the more colorful they were, the more fun it was to chase them. Orange…black….gold…blue….the bigger ones and the brighter ones were the most captivating.
It was a happy, carefree time, feeling the loving warmth of the sun, often running through the yard in bare feet, inhaling deeply of the fragrance of lilacs or fresh cut grass. The butterflies flew with effortless grace, carried by the powerful wind under their wings.
What a thrill to run and jump after them, reaching for them and almost always missing.
We didn’t mind missing them.
When I remember the joy of chasing butterflies, I also remember that it never was about actually catching them. It was about running as fast as we could and imagining that we too had wings and freedom.
In each moment of being totally focused on the effortless rising of the butterfly’s wings, everything else faded away. We were caught up in their beauty and gracefulness, we were filled with joy at sharing a moment of our lives with another living creature, a creature that spun and dipped, and teased us, knowing it would fly safely away.
As Hawthorne said though, the times we actually held a butterfly in our hands wasn’t usually the result of chasing them. Sometimes a butterfly would pause for a moment, landing on a nearby leaf or even on one of our hands or arms.
The thing is, catching a butterfly doesn’t come from chasing them.
And neither does happiness.
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