in the meantime

Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you; but if you turn your attention to other tihngs, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder… – H. D. Thoreau

 

Perhaps the man who mentioned those lines above was right. Perhaps the analogy of happiness to a butterfly is only proper. Happiness is elusive, just like the butterfly. In my tender years, I had the fancy of catching insects especially the butterflies. But lo, they fly so swiftly and they cannot simply stay on one flower. Which is why they are very difficult to catch. My grade school teacher reminded me that butterflies have special senses which help them get away from an impending captor.

To my dismay, I would only then catch damselflies. These innocent creatures can be easily caught by their tails, tie them in a thread and let them fly without totally freeing them.

Perhaps, that is what happiness is all about. We humans sometimes give up chasing the one thing we thought could give us the happiness we all want to have. We take the easily preyed damselflies or the things that we can afford to have.

Happiness is. Happiness was; and it always will be a butterfly – elusive yet unfounding, so beautiful yet so fragile.

In the meantime, we focus on some other things. These could be more important or pressing matters in this universe that we have to attend to. But these stuff may not give us the fulfillment and happiness we see in the butterflies. We cannot help but we have to wake up each morning and do the household chore or meet the deadline that our boss has set for quarter report. We have to deal with life after all. 

 Our search for happiness is set aside to give way for the daily intricacies of life.

During those times, those serious moments that we cater to needs of our families, those times when we rush in line to catch the next cab going to some restaurant because we might miss dinner with old acquaintance; without us knowing it, the butterfly aproaches us and drop by our shoulders. And there, happiness is with us, even if for a while.

Butterflies are actually everywhere. It is when we focus our attention to some other things that they come and appear before us, in times when we are unguarded and momentarily suspend our search for that eusive abstract called happiness.

 

In the meantime, a butterfly is fluttering by.