Scattering Butterfly’s Hope

Hello, friends….

I woke up today seeing paper butterflies hanging on the ceiling of my room. I wonder how these butterflies become the beautiful creatures they are. They seem to be blessed with many beautiful things… brave wings to let them fly somewhere and amazing colors to bring hope to the flowers.

If men have the courage to take risks and hope to change the way things are like that of a butterfly…then great possibilities are endless for each one of us.

So, here’s a challenge for you, friends.

Be like a brave butterfly and scatter butterfly’s hope!

Keep dreaming…

Chille:)

I love to do things that are not usual and obvious to the ordinary mind …things that require elusive imagination and radical passion. Some people call it strange…weird…hard-to-dig-personality. I call it spontaneous creativity.

Who ever dreamed of being surrounded with butterflies, feel the passion of their touch and hold the beauty of that joyful experience? I did…and I still do everyday. But I can’t afford to buy those expensive butterflies and imprison them in one place just to satisfy my radical passion. I wouldn’t endure the sight of those beautiful creatures being locked and caged for my own benefit. So I thought of creating my own butterfly sanctuary out of hard cutout colored pictures and let them hang in the ceiling of my room as if they are really flying. Then to add dramatic background in my room I put butterfly stickers and flowers of different colors and glow in the dark butterflies in the wall. Would you believe, it’s like waking up each day in a butterfly garden? If I stayed on dreaming or just waited for the chance to be surrounded by butterflies, perhaps, it would take some time to realize that dream or be there at the place I wanted to.

I also remember the time when very few people have recognized yoga as a good healing exercise. Some perceived it as something weird and senseless...a boring activity. Some even associated it as an agnostic or atheist’s work out. I wanted to see whether those perceptions were valid. So I tried it… even learned to love it …and skewed the old theories. Now I’m enjoying the healing energy –both body and soul- that yoga exercise brings me. If I were not curious enough to try it and disprove the old notion, I wouldn’t know and I will never ever know the healing power of yoga.

The lesson for me here is this: if I want to do something to change my world, the possibility of achieving the change I dream of lies in my hands. I don’t have to wait for the right chance or depend on other people to make it happen for me. Right chance takes place if I allow it to take place and change will come to me if I work for it (…which tells me I have to conclude my long-ignored unfinished businesses in life!). Sometimes, it really pays to go out of our shell, search out, and take a risk (even if the risk breaks our soul sometimes!).

Google image:  Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus

This reminds me of the story of the two caterpillars, “Stripe and Yellow” in the Hope for the Flowers. In the tale, Stripe and Yellow, want something more from life than eating and growing bigger. But they mistake the urge to get high so they get caught up in a “caterpillar pillar” filled with a squirming mass of caterpillar bodies, each determined to reach a top so far away it can’t be seen. Finally disillusioned, they discover that the way for caterpillars to find their particular “more”, or who they really are, is to enter the cocoon and “risk for a butterfly.”

Most of us experienced being disillusioned sometimes in our lives. Disillusion with the way life is made for us…disillusion with the way our world is turning…disillusion with our own expectations. We want to fly and reach the sky, yet don’t know how. We crave for many things, many wishes, yet don’t know exactly what we want. It’s as if we’re just waiting for a magical moment to tear down the whole order of things and in a strike of a wand, we’re expecting that everything will be renewed, and we’ll live in a whole new world.

There’s nothing wrong with being a dreamer. I am a dreamer and I will remain a dreamer forever. But I dream in a real world. And one thing I’ve learned in dreaming in a real world is how to struggle with faith and hope.

Some of us struggle to “climb the top” and would only feel contentment if they reach the top of the heap. Others are already there at the top of the heap yet feeling so empty… thus still searching for something more meaningful. But searching for one’s self, one’s destiny, one’s purpose for existence, is not always easy. Searching is a struggle…a difficult struggle. But the hard knocks of searching are there to give us a sense of achievement, a sense of hope that somehow we are going to a place meant for us. Some of us are not just meant to climb the top… some of us are meant to fly. For Stripe and Yellow, surrendering to the cocoon is the only way to fly and become a beautiful butterfly. For some of us, changing perspectives, changing priorities, finishing unfinished business and surrendering to serve others and touch lives is the only way to reach a complete, meaningful life.

The amazing transformation of a caterpillar, a lowly worm, into a glorious flying creature is hard to believe. But it’s true because we have actually seen a real butterfly. And as long as there are butterflies in the garden, the flowers will not cease from hoping and people can hope for other transformations invisible to the eye.

Fill your life with butterfly’s hope. And if you believe in that hope, try scattering it to other gardens. You just don’t know what your hope can do to other souls.