“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you” -Nathaniel Hawthorne
I used to retreat to my little home on Navarre Island a few times each year because I knew I could get really quiet and recharge my batteries in the island silence. I know you hear that you have to get quiet and you know, deep inside that this is true. I have a friend who meditates every day for 30 minutes and she is the calmest and most centered person I know. She says meditating is like brushing her teeth. She just can’t leave the house in the morning without doing it. I want to be like her.
My time in Florida was so valuable because I knew that I needed to get quiet or I wouldn’t be able to take care of the life I had created. A life that I wanted to live, not one that I wanted to run from by wrapping myself in the business of the day to day.
One amazing Florida Thanksgiving holiday I took my beach blanket to the big cozy rocking chairs on my little deck so that I could watch the impending sunset. I missed the sunset. The butterflies took over. My Florida Momma Edna picked out my little island home for me and I purchased it sight unseen based on her recommendation. She chose it because right there off of the little deck was a baby palm tree. Probably just 4 feet tall the first time I saw it, this beautiful and strong little palm tree had a destiny. I used to talk to it when I sat outside contemplating the what is and what if’s and it grew like a maniac as a result. It lived through Hurricane Ivan and is still standing very strong and very tall today having acquired just a little lean for weathering the years.
Thanksgiving was a tough one that year and I planned on talking to my palm tree and the sunsets about life at length. But the butterflies were there instead. HUGE monarch butterflies on their Fall migration south were all over my deck, my chair, their palm tree and me. As big as the palm of my hand they would flutter and then land, hundreds and hundreds of them. Then in slow motion they would pulsate and rest. Rest quietly and deeply before they would flutter away with renewed strength.
I sat speechless and amazed for hours with the magnificent butterflies. As each one of them rejuvenated and repaired themselves before taking off on the next leg of their journey, I felt myself rejuvenating and repairing. I found I was breathing in the same pattern as their wings beat, slowly, methodically and deeply.
I left my island a new woman after that particular silent Thanksgiving trip with new Thanksgiving gratitude deep in my soul.
The universe tells you constantly that you must get quiet before you move on with existing. Sometimes it tells you subtly like in the drifting in and out of a butterfly that commands your attention. Sometimes it will tell you seriously with an accident or passing of a loved one. By now you must know that the universe will command your attention when you least want to give it. You also know that you must listen.
If you don’t get quiet you will not live the way you are meant to live. Your business will not survive and be a success the way you want it to survive and be successful if you don’t take time to get quiet. If you don’t find your butterflies, you will not live preciously the way you were intended to. I challenge you to find your butterflies and fulfill your spiritual destiny.
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