“There is a voice inside us that we must be true to, and that is always calling us forth, like some future form, the butterfly of our Soul that claims her freedom.” Mystic Mamma
As a testament to my contrary nature, I will start this story at its end. I was sent the above quote and accompanying image by Laura, at the beginning of the week. It is part of an astrological reading regarding the full moon in this month of December, a Gemini moon. It so happens I am a Gemini. While I can’t say it’s my thing, I felt it was incumbent on me to pay attention to it and here we are.
If you have followed any of my stories, age frequently slips into the conversation. Clocking 75 in the coming year, 2020, is impossible for me to avoid. I have always enjoyed the symbolism of numbers and this time around is a beauty, loaded with meaning. My birthday has always been a big deal, especially thinking about major changes. When I left NYC, after a lifetime of being there, ripping up the fabric of everything I had ever known, including two, precious little ones, my last day of work was on that day, leaving for northern NM several days later. Years passed and I returned to the City, to accompany my mother on her final journey, already having laid down a plan to relocate to Kauai in time for my birthday. She passed exactly a week before, my brother and I finishing what we needed to, managing to sadly celebrate on my new island anyway.
As this year is drawing to a close, it is impossible for me to look around and be filled with optimism. Like many of you, I feel surrounded by fear, anger and hopelessness. It is the vitriol more than anything else that troubles me and I think fear of change is the core. We are drowning in different oceans, but the result is the same and it is anger. The white, global power elite is sinking under a huge wave of color and their life raft is shrinking, inducing a deranged, greedy panic, called neoliberalism. The rainbow rest of us are getting increasingly tired of treading water, feeling it rise dangerously close to our mouths, depriving many of food and air to breathe. Our voiceless planet is angrily bearing witness to the selfishness of its landlords and sacrifices the rest of us are forced to make, often at her expense.
I looked at the indescribable beauty of this butterfly and imagined I could hear her talking to me. I have spent this week trying to listen. One way or the other, I knew I would write my story this afternoon, but wasn’t sure what the pieces would be. Like every morning, I saddled up on my stationary bike, secured my headphones and plugged into Pandora. After a couple of tunes, I was embraced by Rhapsody in Blue, closing my eyes, animatedly conducting the orchestra of my mind for 16 minutes. Just now, sitting at the computer, I tuned into Matisyahu, singing One Day. I was ready to begin, bookended by music I love, making my heart explode with joy.
What does the “butterfly of my soul” want to say today? She wants more from me. I realized that the butterfly is meant to be the ultimate celebration of a life lived. We are all temporarily tethered here and at our end of this life, whenever it happens, we take flight. Everyday of our life is a preparation for that moment.
With that in mind, I returned to the numbers. Climate predictions agree that ten years from now, 2030, will be a watershed moment for all of earth’s inhabitants. I hope I get to stay a slinking caterpillar until then, which puts me up at 85, before my penultimate metamorphosis. My 11 year old grandson will be 21 and maybe I’ll get to share the things prohibited by the delicacy of his earlier years.
Assuming I get to hang around for now, what do I do with this “voice inside me”? I am far too old to be a foolish optimist and hopefully far too young to be a lifeless pessimist. I think if we focus all our attention on what is going on around us, we run the danger of muting that voice within. I don’t know if we will ever get to the point of realizing what we all share, which seems pretty damn futile from here. The raft keeps shrinking and at some point it will become so unstable, it will flip over or we’ll flip it, joining the rest of us in the one ocean we share. All bets are off until then.
I guess I have tried to be an honest guy most of my life, but the search for truth demands a far more mature compass, ultimately understanding it’s about the striving, but never the arriving. The butterfly awaits us all.