I began writing and was interrupted by life. This is an expansion of a letter I wrote in the time that came before and the inspiration that followed…
To my friend K____, who lies bored in a hospital bed waiting for things to happen. May the butterflies find you.
Dear K,
I’m sending this card with all the hopes for joy that can be fit between two pages. You may wonder how much hope that is? Endless? Unmeasurable? (Meaningless unless someone reads it.) I guess it depends on which two pieces of paper they are.
Between a birth certificate and death certificate is one measure of a life. At least, in terms of length. Quality is not easily included in a date range. Though, the shorter the measure, the greater the sorrow is for somebody, to be sure. But there is no opposite corollary: a longer life doesn’t automatically mean a happier one. Misery might be much better endured if there were a known end date to look forward to. * And what is happiness to one person might be unendurable misery to another. Ask anyone who grows and lives in the same town their whole life never seeing a life outside a circumscribed boundary. For some that would be heaven, for others, hell depending one whether choice is involved.
Between a wedding license and a divorce decree comes a world of happiness that dissolves with slowly diminishing returns until, one day, the balance is too far in the negative to be recouped. At best, you might achieve a happiness plateau where joy is all but a distant speck in the rear view mirror.**
Does this mean that all happiness inevitably ends? Maybe. Or maybe it’s that happiness is not a butterfly to be preserved forever on a page. Pinning it down kills it. Maybe it flitters on the periphery, just out of permanence. Always sought after in a field of flowers on a hot, sunny day. It is ineffable and elusive. There and then gone again. And perhaps it has a season you must wait for, like spring after a long, long winter. That much more appreciated because it lasts only so long.
I would write you more, but my page has run out. May you spot butterflies somewhere everyday.
Ever,
Me
Asterisk Bedazzled Footnote:
*I feel I should mention at this point that I am actually in a good mood. I am not feeling the need to “end it all.” This is not a cry for help. This is me being lighthearted. It just doesn’t look like everybody else’s lighthearted at all.
**I will be greatly surprised if I am ever asked to make a toast at weddings after writing this. They might be afraid of what I would say to the happy couple.
TheDustSeason 
I think this is wonderful. Lyrical and thoughtful. I’ve always thought that happiness is a quality of memory, rather than experience.
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Oh my gawd, yes! That’s exactly how it feels. I rarely can feel happy in a moment (usually worrying about what will go horribly wrong.) It isn’t until an event is over and I have nice pictures to prove it was fun that I can relax and enjoy in retrospect. I am probably warped somehow, but at least I eventually enjoy my moments–if a tad time delayed and through a backwards-looking lens.
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We’re both warped then. But I do think it’s quite normal to only enjoy stuff in retrospect.
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I enjoyed your remark once I read it. So, I agree. Much of my pleasure comes after the fact. 🙂
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Eternity
William Blake
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise
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I’m really appreciating the poetic reflections. I was afraid I was coming across as bleak as hell when that wasn’t my intention.
Love the Blake reference in particular. Sometimes a poem says so much when it uses the fewest words.
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❤
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Wonderful!
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Awww, shucks. *Kicks stone, hands in pockets.*
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Anyone would be pleased to receive such a thoughtful and beautifully expressed sentiment K!
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I’ll be sure to remember this if my friend objects to life-and-death references while she is ensconced in a hospital bed. (She is unlikely to complain though; she isn’t like me in that respect. She is one of my kinder friends.) I’m lucky I know such kind and forgiving people. It is my saving grace that I know good people. Thanks for being one of them.
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Happy to be counted among them K!
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I wish more butterflies for everyone.
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You are a newly-emerged-from-a-chrysalis kind of guy. I’ve always thought that.
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And you, I think, are very perceptive.
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❤ We speak the same lighthearted! ❤
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🦋 Insert butterfly emoji here. 🦋
(Dangit, I keep trying to find a Blue Morpho that will cut and paste. Curses. I am foiled again.) Enjoy the digital monarchs. You strike me as an equal-opportunity butterfly appreciator anyway.
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