Conceptual thinking

Love and Butterfly

Love is like holding a butterfly gently and letting it imprint the patterns from its wings on your palm before it flies away from your light grasp.

That's exactly how love happens, without any noise. In such a subtle and calm way that most often it doesn't even feel like anything is happening at all. Such a light touch is the touch of a butterfly!

Here, the butterfly is a metaphorical representation of "time": a particular moment or a phase of life. When it comes to you, you catch it gently, almost unknowingly. Once that moment melts away, you are left with its imprint. This imprint of patterns on your palm from its wings is metaphorically your "relationship". Your palm is your "heart". And whatever you feel while looking at those freshly imprinted beautiful patterns on your palm, formed from the sticky dust from the wings, is nothing but "love".

But life doesn't simply end there. You will always be tempted to catch more butterflies, and life will keep on granting you more butterflies, more of such moments, more of such opportunities. But here's the truth: each butterfly has a distinct and unique pattern on its wings, completely different. The more patterns get imprinted on your palm, the more overlapping of different patterns will happen. The more patterns overlap on your palm, the muddier and more messed up your palm would look. The dirtier your palm appears, the less happy you would feel looking at it.

Long story short, it is only the very first imprint on your palm that actually matters. That first-ever freshly imprinted pattern on your palm is the only neat and clear pattern you would ever get. And what appears neat and clear is actually beautiful. The longer you protect that imprint on your palm from overlapping with other patterns from the wings of other different butterflies, the longer it would remain that way: neat, clear, and beautiful. The longer its beauty is preserved through time, the greater would be your happiness each time you stare at your palm.

But what if you somehow messed up the first imprint, and you want another pattern to be formed on your palm? Then, my friend, overlapping your remaining messed-up imprint with a different new imprint will only further mess up your palm. You must first wash your palm with clean water, wipe it dry before catching another butterfly!

Here, the cleaning of the palm with water is a metaphorical representation of cleansing the heart through spiritual endeavors. "Clean water" is spirituality, and the entire process of washing it out till wiping your palm dry is "healing" your heart through divine grace to return back to your former self before getting into another relationship.

Love is like a butterfly, simple but not so easy.

©_abhijit_