Beautiful Butterfly

Like so many, I'm inclined to always be flying away. This solemn week spurs me to something healthy: stopping. Simple. Refreshing. Just doing nothing for the purpose of becoming more conscious. More aware of what may lie underneath memories.

Remembering Anne. I'm talking college here many years back. This classmate of mine was magnetic on campus. Pretty, confident, a free spirit. Her leadership influenced many students far beyond the perimeter of our class batch. Fluttering and flying, a quiet specimen of beauty, butterfly like.

Well, I myself, on campus, was news too. In the varsity champion limelight ... clearly noted in the university papers. I was an influencer, a leader myself, like Anne. Does that imply I was like her spirit or I liked her? Am I leaving that impression? If so, I'm not fully communicating here. Anne was a butterfly, remember ... I was a raging hawk! Though classmates, seeing each day, I snubbed her for no clear reason, even when she's reaching out. Something must be wrong with my psyche.

But that's long ago! The lessons about me from there on for the next decades have matured, tested by triumph and tragedy alike. Clearly, I was at one point in my life, when I was not free ... limited, shy. A lonely, angry youth. My personality had rough edges. I was inside my cocoon, afraid of something. Anne, the secure, had no net around her, which was why she could do her own kind of flying. I missed that part for my self.

Have you been a fragile butterfly who needs room to become? Do you need space to spread your wings outside the cocoon of fear, anger, or timidity? Do you need to realize that you have color all your own, that you have beauty and grace beyond the fences surrounding your own garden? There is a way you know ... it's there waiting for you to see and discover. If you choose to emerge out of your cocoon eclipsed beneath the shadow of life ... still, silent, slowly you learn to flutter and flourish, like a beautiful butterfly in flight, finally free.