Chasing after butterflies

“Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
–Nathaniel Hawthorne

(Photograph: Callaway Gardens/ Butterfly House/ Pine Mt., Ga/ Julie Cook/ 2013)

I fear we spend a great deal of time and energy, with so much of our lives wasted, chasing after… oh so desperately…the “butterflies” of life—those things which we believe, the things we just know, will bring us happiness….most often never “catching” the ever elusive “butterfly”….

That is…until finally exhausted with the chase, and exhausted with our lives in general, we stop dashing and darting, we stop running around grabbing at this and that…in vain attempts of satiating certain unknown wants, desires and needs with always elusive and un-catchable butterflies…..that we collapse into a an exhausted stupor….and just when we give up, out of no where, a different butterfly, the right one all along, quietly and oh so gently, lights on us

Then and only then may we experience true contentment and joy……