Flutterby

I had a beautiful weekend, and one of the most wonderful things was this:

Ever just get excited about something completely “normal”, because for just an instant, you’re able to step back and see just how extraordinary it is? That’s a wonderful feeling. I’m usually too stressed. I worry about ev-ery-thing. Is my partner happy? Am I engaging my students to that they’re not bored and actually learning something? Should I be eating this? Should I be drinking this? Do I phone my family often enough? Can anyone see the stain where the tomato spewed up on my jeans? (Will they think I’m a slob?) Will anyone notice that I’m wearing the same shirt to work on the same day of the week, every week (I mean, it’s clean an all, I just can’t be bothered to dig down in the small pile of shirts to wear a new one.) My interior dialogue goes on and on and on like this. Sleep is almost a break, but heaven forbid that I wake up in the middle of the night to go pee and my brain starts going again…

So the butterfly (or the flutterby, as they should be called); it landed on my ropes as I was belaying my partner. It crawled along and tasted various parts of the green rope (ignored the blue one). I was hoping it would still be there when my partner arrived, but it flew away…towards my helmet! There it battered around for a few moments and I felt like this beautiful little creature was patting me on the head (Good girl! Who’s a good girl? You are!) Then it flew away.

It was just a private moment of bliss, not captured on film (although I was able to look up the species later and steal a photo off the web).

Happens sometimes, these moments of bliss, and I am thankful.