The Butterfly Superstition

Or, Belief & Doubt Held In Tandem Generating Noticeable Contentment.

Often when i go outside, a butterfly will flutterby. Grant me this alliteration because that is what it feels like. A flutter. Often also i will get a sense that this passing creature “means” something, & that it signifies that i “am in the right place.” Then my next thought is usually a gentle dismissal of this superstition, usually something like: “That’s just a metaphor.” It’s important to me to be careful about superimposing metaphors over ones lifestory, as i have seen firsthand how that kind of reaction to the world can lead to mental health issues.

A lifelong friend of mine, who in his midtwenties began to suffer from & was diagnosed with schizophrenia, once told me that when he was most in the depths of his mind, prior to medication, “everything was a metaphor,” to such an extent that when he was walking in the street he did not so much allow as was controlled by the psychogeography of his surroundings. The example he gave that i’ve always remembered was: “If a traffic light i was walking by turned red or green, i would feel controlled by it, as if whatever thought i was having before i saw the light… that the light was a Yes or a No answer to the thought. Or if my thought was ‘Should i do this thing.’ The green light would say Yes or the red light would say No. And then i would actually follow what it told me to do.”

This story shook me out of a sort of daydream i had lived in my entire life upto that point. I became very aware of my minds inclination toward superimposing metaphors on the world around us. Back to the butterfly. It fluttered by. I felt at first this was a good omen, that it represented being “in the right place at the right time” or that it was somehow “lucky” or a blessing. The follow-up thought is a contra- thought, which in this case is a temperance, of: “It’s not ‘luck’ it’s chance. Or, more likely, i am near a garden with flowers butterflies like, & i happened to be on a path which intersects regularly with butterflies. It’s explainable. And whether its pure chance, or probabalistic, there is no need to impose a ‘meaning’ on this butterfly & its relation to my lifestory.” Some people, the more superstition inclined, may feel offput by this minor deconstruction, which is really just admitting to oneself a couple possible facts about the reality of the situation. The probability of a plants nearby that butterflies pollinate, the chance element of when i decide to go outside for the day, etc. By stating these facts, i am not wholly dismissing the fact that i still have the feeling, everytime, that the butterfly represents luck, to me in my life. No matter how much i can rationalize it, the so-called intuition remains.

The point here is not to dismiss the superstition-inclined intuition, nor is it to fully believe it. The point here is about temperance, of the emotional situations that arise in ones own mind. Because it is an emotional situation. The passing butterfly makes me feel good, i admire it, i experience a quick sensation of “being on the right path” & being “blessed by good fortune,” & naturally this makes me feel good. But so too in its contra-process, when i temper the pronoia & bring myself, ‘back down to earth’ as they say, to a more grounded outlook, reminding myself of the fuller contexts of my situation, so too does that moderation give rise to a subtler, perhaps more melancholy form of enjoyment of the ongoing moment. An acceptance of nature as it is, but also an admiration for the minds ability to drown in excess, but also the minds ability to bring itself back to reality. Because superstition is a kind of excess, an overabundance of belief, some would say superfluous, but i believe the passing sensation does have value, not only unto itself as a savory & enthusiastic moment, but even moreso if it is tempered & acknowledged for what it is, which is the minds grasping for meaning, the minds insistence that everything ‘must’ mean something, no matter how absurd. And then for this belief to work in tandem with doubt, that is when the truly fascinating part of the experience begins…

Each time a butterfly passes me by, i first experience superstition, then i experience a suite of rationalization, but then… then the real magic of the mind/ matter dialog begins, because then i reach an ambivalence, & i notice very vividly each time, that this coupling of the two contrary feelings, of the enthusiasm of belief intermingled with the melancholy of doubt, they synthesize & for a brief but elastic moment, i experience what i can only call a genuine form of contentment, an almost thoughtless moment, where the two halves of belief/doubt, superstition/ rationalization become so in doubt & in belief of theirselves & each other, simultaneously, i reach an internal balance. The thoughts stop. Satori. And i reach a moment of pure feeling. Of an admittance of never knowing for certain, of honesty with oneself, of ambivalence becoming acceptance. And this is the breadth of the fascination. That it does not matter which side i choose, but rather, that i cannot choose a side with real honesty in this little mind-war of minutia. That choosing a side, that being anti-other is what makes the mind feel miserable. That if i stand at the center of the minds battlefield between belief & doubt, hope & despair, & instead inhale calmly in the eye of the storm, i feel at peace. And in that moment, contentment arises. And i know that there is no need to impose meaning on the butterfly who so graciously & chaotically fluttered by at the exact height of my particular eye level. A coincidence not in the superstitious sense but in the literal, the butterfly & i are two separate incidents in spacetime whose lives have intersected. And i wonder if the butterfly noticed me? But i know that this thought is silly. Is of maybe poetic value but no real practical value. That there is no need to feel lucky, nor is there is a need to dismiss its meaning, but that the real value is in appreciating the experience unto itself. As a beautiful moment of a beautiful creature strugglingly flapping in flutter its thin wild wings on a beautiful day in the too hot sun.

That ambivalence is where contentment blooms.