Butterfly Mind

I want to live while I’m alive

January 11th, 2022

I don’t care about living boldly. I just want to live.

A favorite past-time for my husband and me is to talk about what we’re going to do when we retire. I am eager for when my time is my own, to do with what I please. But when I think of actually having that time, on a daily basis, I get kind of freaked out. Our society is achievement-driven and hyperbolic; everything must be bold and brave, epic and adventurous, the fastest, greatest, biggest, most. Are my dreams big enough? What is my “thing” that defines me? What do I aspire to? What’s my passion?

I worry about these things. I worry that I should have a goal in mind for my life, that I have to be moving toward something.

I’m likely more than halfway through my allotted days. As our kids grow up, I become more aware that the number of years I’ll be here is shrinking. By the time I retire, I’ll be even closer to death.

Life is astonishing. I don’t need big and bold and epic to appreciate the nearly incomprehensible fact that we exist. I continually wonder that we are even here, that we live and breathe and create. We create pragmatic things to help us survive, and we create to bring beauty into the world as well. Who thought to create a piano or a saxophone? I mean look at them! The strings and hammers and keys of the piano, the curves and valves and reed of the saxophone. What must have gone into creating these instruments to make the sounds they make to bring them together as music, and for what reason? For pleasure and beauty. I look around the room I sit in, at the photographs on my wall, and the fountain pens I write with, and the lined notebooks, and the lamps and lightbulbs, the smooth glass windows that slide open and shut, the dishwasher that churns away, the language I type and that’s printed in books, and humans invented all of this! We started with rocks and sticks, and now we have laptops and appliances, electric light and indoor plumbing, toothbrushes and tissue boxes, beds and blankets, and it’s all absolutely marvelous. I can’t get over it.

So when I think about retirement, and my existence right now, I don’t want to waste it. I want to be an active participant in life. I don’t think that means I have to be bold or adventurous. I think it can be simpler than that. I can sniff the air, or grow flowers for birds and butterflies. I can seek the beauty and excellence that so satisfies my soul. These bring me deep pleasure and a sense of awe. I can write small things, and build fires, and make nice dinners, and laugh with my family and friends.

I’m weary of thinking that to live life to its fullest, I need a big dream or that I must be bold or that I should be striving towards something. I think what works better for me is to just savor the life I have in the time that I have it.

This is my response to Bloganuary prompt 11: What does it mean to live boldly?
I can’t believe I get to live here

January 10th, 2022

When we first moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, nearly 10 years ago, I read (and blogged about) a local newspaper article about how to build durable happiness. The article said that to sustain happiness, we should appreciate and savor, and continue to appreciate and savor, the good things we have in our lives.

I want to lean into winter this year, so when my husband asked me yesterday if I wanted to go hiking with him, I said yes. I had sniffed the air and knew from the forecast that rain was coming. Being cold and wet is pretty much my least favorite state to be in. It’s miserable and uncomfortable and makes me very grumpy, so I almost didn’t join him. I sucked it up, put on multiple layers, including a rain coat, and went anyway.

The roads were clear on the first part of our drive. As we climbed in altitude on the lesser travelled routes, the winding mountain paths got pretty slushy. Rain spit on the windshield, but when we arrived at the trailhead, it stopped. I grabbed my camera and gaiters, and we set off into the snowy forest.

Snowy road to War Spur trail

Though we’re too far from the ocean for me to want to live here forever, I’m grateful that we get to live here right now. We could have ended up in a much less pleasant town. I’m grateful we live in a place with four distinct seasons, with mountains, snow, mosses and ferns, deciduous and evergreen trees, hiking, birds, and natural beauty in every direction. I’m grateful that yesterday, the weather kept people inside, and we had the whole forest to ourselves.

Hikers had been there since the snow fell, but we were the only ones out when we hiked

I’m grateful my husband planned to hike regardless of the forecast, and that I decided to go with him despite my aversion to being cold and wet. I’m grateful we had nowhere to be and nothing we had to do, and we had the freedom and means to go for a day hike. I’m grateful for my wool socks, wool hat, gloves, raincoat, and hard-soled hiking shoes to keep me cozy while hiking in the snow, and that it didn’t rain on us while we were out of the car after all. I’m grateful for my camera to help me capture the scenery. I’m grateful for the sound of the wind in the trees. I’m grateful for our home, where our cats and children were warm and dry.

And I’m grateful for our fireplace, where I built a roaring wood fire when we got back home and the rain finally came down.

I think that was more than five things for today’s Bloganuary prompt, What are 5 things you are grateful for today? I could have written many more! But it would have bored you.
Sniff the air

January 9th, 2022

When I stuck my nose out the back door yesterday, the air was sharp with cold. I caught a lingering drift of woodsmoke from a chimney. White snow glittered on the deck, and the dry, frigid air smelled like it had been scrubbed clean, like every particle of moisture and pollen and dust had frozen and fallen right out of it. The temperature was 5℉ (-15℃).

Today, I slid the back door open, poked my head out, and sniffed again. The air is a warmer cold than yesterday (31℉ / -0.5℃), and carries more humidity. I smell no earth in it, unlike earlier in the month when I’d smell leaf litter or wet soil. I can’t really smell anything, honestly. It only smells like air; I feel its temperature and moisture more than I smell any scent. According to the weather forecast, rain is coming.

One of my intentions for 2022 is to connect: to connect with people, with nature, with the divine if I’m lucky. I recently read Wintering by Katherine May, and was struck by a very simple habit she’s developed: before she sits down to meditate each day, she opens the back door to sniff the air:

In the last few weeks, the mornings have smelled fresh and crisp, as if the encroaching cold is making everything clean.
Katherine May, Wintering

For years, I’ve been in the habit of checking the weather app on my phone every morning. I look at it to see what the day will bring, and within minutes I’ve often forgotten what it said. If the sun is up, I can look out the window to get part of the picture of what’s going on, but there’s a barrier between me and the outside world when I look through glass.

Smelling the air is immersive. It’s makes real what I read in the weather app, and it’s a fuller experience than what I can observe through a window. Going out into the air, even if it’s just my head that pokes out, helps me pay attention to the bigger world. It’s a small and simple thing I can do each day to connect with nature, with my own senses, and sometimes with the divine.
Mind cleanup

January 8th, 2022

Today’s writing prompt is this: What do you like most about your writing?

I like that it gets all this mess out of my head. Without writing, I’m not sure I’d be able to maneuver in the physical space of the world. I’d be too busy following tangled mental threads, running on hamster wheels of worry, running things I need to remember over and over again in my mind until I do the thing and I don’t have to remember it anymore.

I shared once that writing for me is like Dumbledore’s Pensieve, a magical repository where he can siphon memories out of his mind for storage and later review: writing things out removes them from my head so that I can get on with my external life. Unlike the Pensieve, I don’t just write memories, and I don’t necessarily write for later review. It’s more of a mental hygiene thing, like brushing my hair or clipping my nails. Writing helps keep things from getting tangled or growing into gnarly curled claws that get in the way of everything, or that break because they weren’t cared for.

I already spend a ton of time in my head. Without writing, I’m not sure how I would get out of it to navigate life.
I’m an easy laugh

January 7th, 2022

What makes me laugh? Everything! Wit. Irreverence. Puns. Footballs in the crotch. The best humor is smart and surprising, and my favorite kinds of humor are probably the extremes: the low and base, filled with profanity and to be shared only with the most intimate of friends, in a safe space, which is probably why I love it so much, and high humor, which is sharp and intelligent, like Hannah Gadsby, and which studies the human condition and finds the secrets we all share, then surprises us by bringing them out in the open with such perfect awareness, you’d swear the comic had gone inside the darkest corners of your mind and said, “I see you!” And their comedy shows you’re not alone, and look, everyone is laughing because they too can relate, and hey, this thing you thought was a you thing is actually a human thing.

I especially laugh when high humor is also base. Because it often is.

I laugh at puns, at wordplay, at memes, gifs, emoji reactions, cat videos. Cats are very funny. David Sedaris makes me laugh, especially Me Talk Pretty One Day. All of my favorite people make me laugh. Often when our kids tell me about a new person in their lives, I ask, “Are they funny?”

I guess it’s not true that I laugh at everything, though. Meanness isn’t funny to me. And sitcoms and comedy movies often aren’t that funny to me either. I don’t know why. Perhaps they’re obvious, or basic, or predictable. Or maybe they try too hard. Or maybe it’s just because they’re trying to set the expectation from the beginning that they are going to be funny — “I am a comedy!” — so they lose the element of surprise.

I’m lucky, though, that I laugh easily. My husband says he married me because I’m an easy laugh. But truly, he’s very funny. And our kids have picked up his wit. Dinner time is often a testing ground for landing jokes, and perhaps my favorite part of that is that they all keep trying even when something doesn’t work. They’re not afraid of failure: if a line doesn’t land, they’ll analyze it to see what didn’t work, then try a different approach. I make them all feel good by laughing at everything, but the true test is if you can get a laugh out of a more discerning member of our family. Then you can feel proud of your work.

This is for Bloganuary prompt 7: What makes you laugh?
My role models

January 6th, 2022

I looked up the definition of inspire today. I wanted to know, if I were to answer the question, “Who inspires you?” that I knew precisely what question I was answering.

Before looking it up, I had two thoughts about what it means to feel inspired. The first is an onrush of awe and a sense of enormous potential. That kind of inspiration comes with a feeling of tapping into to the divine, and it fills me with gratitude and wonder.

I wasn’t sure if that’s actually inspiration, though, because it doesn’t necessarily come with any sort of change after it happens. For a question like, “Who inspires you?” I thought inspiration might not be what I was thinking at first — a feeling of awe and beauty and wonder — but instead that it should include an element of action. If someone inspires me, it seems like they should make me change my behavior.

It turns out that inspiration is both of those things:

in·spire v. 1. To affect, guide, or arouse by divine influence. 2. To fill with enlivening or exalting emotion. 3.a. To stimulate to action; motivate. b. To affect or touch.
The American Heritage College Dictionary Third Edition

So, that’s not helpful! Except in the sense that it bought me some time because I’m really terrible at answering questions like “what’s your favorite” or “who inspires you.”

For the first type of inspiration, the one that fills with enlivening or exalting emotion, creators inspire me. Being moved by beauty or excellence is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and people who create are my heroes. When I experience an exquisite work of fiction, painting, cinema, drama, musical composition, songwriting, photography, writing, or comedy, I am filled with wonder. Artists inspire me. They help me see the glory of the human mind and how we fit in with each other and with the world.

For the second type of inspiration, the one that stimulates action and motivates, this one is as important as the first, but in a completely different way. People who spark change lead by example; they are role models simply by existing in the world and being who they are. They exhibit behaviors we can observe, be affected by, see the consequences of, and then emulate ourselves. I have dozens of role models who are close to me in my life who inspire me in this way. I will not name them here because the list would be too long, and each person inspires different parts of my behavior: humor, humility, candor, tact, communication.

But the people closest to me, the ones who live in my house with me, and who I’m lucky enough to have in my life on a daily basis, are the ones who inspire me most. My husband inspires kindness and generosity. Our kids inspire humor and honesty. All three of them motivate me to be a better person. And when I say inspire in this case, I mean that every day, I edit my behavior to act differently and better because of them.

This is my entry for the Bloganuary challenge, day 6: Who is someone who inspires you and why?