Anticipation

Remarking about the fluttering of the "butterflies" in her stomach to a quiz show host, a young quiz show contestant later found a note mailed to her home. "I feel compelled to write you and to inquire," an entomologist wrote: "are you not aware that most butterflies, after they have acquired wings, only live for two weeks or less? That they spend months or even years as eggs and caterpillars and pupae?"

As with all things, good feelings shouldn't be taken for granted. Reflect on the time that it takes them to develop. Lives—and the events and experiences that make them up—are likewise protracted and lie dormant for years, highlighted by fleeting and relished "butterfly" moments. Carpe diem, trust little in the future, and get the most from the butterflies as they will give. People who can take the present moment and make the most of it, it turns out, do the best for themselves in the long run. As well as there are reasons for going over things slowly, for relishing the time that you have with them, there are reasons to anticipate that good times will come. In this house there will be marvelous food; in this work the task will soon be done. You can't trust that your butterflies will have wings longer than two weeks, but by relishing both their growth and their fruit, you can make them live forever.

"For me a woman is a book. There is no such thing as a bad book, as I have already told you. Go over it page by page, one is sure to find some place that will repay you for your trouble. Page by page, my friend, I love to go over it slowly."

— Frank Harris, My Life and Loves, vol. III

Big toes

"Pranic energy only spreads along the open spaces," the endearingly awkward-sounding Pakistani yogi addressed her stretching audience. It reminded me of a book that I've recently read, and how energy seems to spread both through our bodies and outside them while we're reading something that makes us feel a surreal bond with others. I knew that she could: vibes are always running through the ether. As we create more space they flow more freely. And I have felt the same with this book, as I cannot help but speak up when I see someone the same energy from someone reading it. To the extent that I needed that estranged lover in the bar there to share my enlightenment, she was.

Moving through self-growth like the author, I recognized that to be content I have to come to terms with the past, those things that for our small brains are so difficult to face head on. At one point the author seeks the attention of the man who had both loved her but could not live with her, through meditation. “Hi sweetie.” She was, in reality, summoning herself to address the doubts that she held about the man. At the same time that she was communicating through open space-there was literally nothing that she was speaking to-she was at the same time allowing space to flourish in her own mind. The equivalent of those simple words has been uttered by so many in the search for closure after a relationship fissures or completely breaks apart.

When there is a disaster, though, what is often needed is space to organize things and get them back in order. Yoga practitioners constantly try to cultivate space, both in the world immediately around them and within their body. "Narrowing of space is synonymous with degeneration, and opening up of space is synonymous with life, health and vigour," the yoga instructor continued. Take time to rejuvenate. An acquaintance of mine once invested greatly in a project, both emotionally and monetarily, and needed space to recover when the endeavor failed. After he painted stars on his daughter’s bicycle as a way to pass time, word spread quickly. Soon other kids showed up wishing for the same embellishment. Once he had painted most of the bikes in the neighborhood fleet, a great enthusiasm for his work returned. He had painted a universe that he could work with; he could see that there were many reasons to reach for stars.

"The tone of the muscles in the big toe," she told her students, "would be the best indicator of one's ability to cultivate open space among the body." The big toe is the symbolic and practical connection to the earth, she continued, and without strength in this toe we won't be able to lift ourselves up. Do we have muscles in our toes? Not any tone, certainly, in mine. But I am happy to be conscious of it, to recognize that such a small an seemingly insignificant extremity of my body creates space and thus allows prana—the energy of life—to flow. Ironically enough, as her students lay on the ground, just as their big toes pointed toward the ceiling, she instructed them, "with the space you've created during practice . . . lift up."

Fog on the windows

I ran into an ex at the bar several weeks ago. I imagined myself in her boyfriend's place—as I certainly could have been. Instead of him, I would be thinking about her highly successful bocce league and worrying about whether the conference call had gone through for a talk about expansion. My path was richer—or at least it was a path that I now know was full of marvelous experiences and growth—for having diverged and made the way on my own for just a bit longer.

When I looked in the dictionary for the definition of solitude I found loneliness, which is a subtlety I can't forgive them for missing. The editors should have not have taken it so lightly; the difference is comfort. In the first you can have it, and it in the latter you cannot. Loneliness is associated with unhappiness, unquiet, and ennui. Solitude, on the other hand, can make us stronger and more in touch with the world once we're happy to re-enter it.

It runs in my dad’s side of the family. Always something of a loner, for lack of a better term, he is happy to have met a “social director” that kept him from going too far. We are reminded by a country legend we’re reminded to always travel with others—if you ain’t lovin’ you ain’t livin.’ Indeed, the best of times I have enjoyed in the company of others, and I must heed this rule. But, I am constantly balancing my solitary character with the pleasure of company. When asked whether she feared death (her lover had died in a plane crash on the way to visit her many years before), the legendary French singer Edith Piaf replied: not as much as I fear solitude.

Certainly I don’t fear it—often I seek it out and embrace it—but realize that if we don’t pass time with others, and take time to both love and to lose, we might as well be dead anyway. Passing time with people, whether finding them as I travel or laughing with old friends who live close to home, the company of others is what really forms us and makes us human. Solitude does make us stronger—if we can fend off its quick-encroaching neighbor. Thankfully the "social directors" of life keep us in touch with the rest of the world, but the only way to keep ourselves sane are bouts of solitude once in a while.

365 x 24 more

As I just passed the final birthday that I will enjoy in my twenties, I remembered talking to my mom some months ago and trying to describe what it felt like to be a twenty-eight year old and wonder what decisions about our everyday lives matter. These things don’t matter, she argued, all these things work out in the end… But, decisions that we make now do affect our futures, and I often get caught up in thinking about them to much. It makes more trouble than it’s worth, though. I’m done with it – decisiveness from here on out. If you think about it, people who make decisions, almost regardless of whether they’re good or bad, get further along in life. And, a decision, it turns out, often turns out to be the kernel of the plan in any case, since it allows to advance, to grow with the rest of the world. As birthdays so invariably remind us, it moves pretty quickly.


“But sometimes if you wait until you have your entire plan figured out and buttoned-up, the world will have moved on and passed you by.” – John Wood, Philanthropist extraordinaire, Room to Read