I Like Trees

 FUCK BUTTERFLIES.

 That’s what it said across the top of my friend R’s journal page.

We’re brought up on the legend of the butterfly. It’s an irresistible idea, really; that if we can just find ourselves, somewhere inside the hungry, crawling worm that we feel like in our everyday lives, the one we can’t stand being… if we could just find the blueprint for the better version, and transform by escaping for a little while, we could emerge as a beautiful, happy, winged truth, free from the survival toil, just loving and free. Existing to flit and to flirt until death.

Which, for butterflies, doesn’t actually take very long.

Most of us would still consider it a fair deal. A lifetime of crawling, for fifteen minutes in the sun. The idea that a person can eat, eat, eat, until it’s time to get our awareness into place- at which point we just drop everything and leave. Then we break free into the life of being loved like we want to be, without the horrific effort of learning to be enough, in ourselves, to live without that external sun.

It’s beautiful. It’s inspirational. It’s absolutely, utterly poisonous. It’s nonsense like the butterfly myth that sabotages our real lives, and threatens our real growth. Let’s be honest: most of us have absolutely no trouble finding ourselves. We know right where we are, that’s part of the problem. We know all about where we are. We look around and feel helpless, and the art of finding ourselves is something we love. It frees us from the much less glamourous job of putting up with ourselves, the much less interesting daily practice and choice that really creates change.

All of us would love to see Julia Roberts eating her way across Italy. She’s the ultimate butterfly story, ever since Pretty Woman, where she went from crawling unhappy (but carrying the blueprint for elegant) hooker to elegant girlfriend with future life free from financial or emotional want. She didn’t DO anything to create this change, except to rise to the occasion when the opportunity came for finding herself, once she was outside her normal environment. She became a butterfly, just like that. First the consuming everything in sight, then the withdrawal from her old world, then off to love and sunlight.

I don’t really expect much more from “Eat, Pray, Love.” The much less lovely work that creates real change is the awkward daily task of learning to live with ourselves, and with the world as it is. Not removing from it, not transforming ourselves drastically, but the work we’re already doing, the work of becoming and making and doing, right here. Not finding our beautiful, love-centered butterfly endings, but living with out crawling, hungry, daily selves. The selves that are not worms and which will, if we force them to become winged beauties that live on nothing but love, will die.

Breaking free from metaphors is hard. Putting down the books (yes, even this one) and coming to grips with being our real selves is even harder. Recognising that we have found ourselves, and that we may need to change ourselves in something even more important than “get me out of here” ways, is hard. Desperately, painfully hard. It involves practice, constant effort, real personality change through months and years of determined growth and behaviour change, and it only works on vacation if you were already doing the work before you left.

Most of us can’t just up and leave. Most of us have lives that have something of value in them, that we would rather not destroy. It’s not helpful to have the idea spread further that leaving it, withdrawing from it, is the way to improvement. That’s actually an elitist attitude that damages us- if only those who can offord retreats can get enlightenment, that rules out most single mothers right now. Enlightenment doesn’t come from retreat. Enlightenment comes from exposure and engagement.

Engagement, not the kind where your work is all you do, but where you accept that work is work, and hunger is hunger, and love is love. And love can’t substitute for self. It can’t substitute for growth. It can’t make you happy with yourself, or fill the emptiness inside, because that’s just a temporary stopgap. Really filling it doesn’t mean being loved, or loving one person, it means coming to know and love and work with the world you’re in. Getting strong enough to make choices that improve it, and feeling like you make a difference because you are able to make a difference.

Inspiration is just that: inspiration. It reminds us why we do what we do; it can’t substitute for doing it. “Eat, Pray, Love,” is great as a butterfly book, but it’s only enough as a mantra if you were already doing the “work, share, cope,” part of the project. Whatever you’re doing, it’s not about discovering, but also about practicing. If you have to choose between self-discovery and practicing self-regulation, always choose practicing. A little discovery can direct a lot of practicing- a lot of discovery can’t make up for missing even a little bit of the real work.

That’s what it comes down to, really. Practicing. Real personality change comes from effort over time, constantly returning to your commitment to bring your choices into line with who you want to be. The fast breakthroughs come from slowly-exercised determination and willpower. Real change, and real life, require real effort. Self-sufficiency and self-determination also don’t happen if all you focus on is yourself. You have to focus on your life, you actions, your world and your place in it. Not you compared to who you want to be, but also on what you’re doing right now where you could be making better choices. And then making them, which is hard.

I’m not against, “Eat, Pray, Love.” I think it’s a great reminder for people who might need it. It’s unfortunate, since it begins and ends with love affairs, relationships that are not nearly as important as a person’s real relationship with their true self. (If that’s just a love affair, you’re in more trouble than this little leaf can help you with.) It leaves out the real story, the hungry tough work on the ground.

As a butterfly story, it’s beautiful and charming. Just don’t mistake the metaphors for the real work to be done, or how to do it.

After all, even my friend admitted, at the bottom of her journal entry… “…i love butterflies. “

 It’s all right. So do we. Work, share, cope with the phenomenal effort of living. I can’t promise you the butterfly ending. Even if they don’t admit it, the butterflies don’t really get the advertised butterfly ending, either. What I can promise you is that the life you have will eventually be worth giving up the butterfly bullshit for, because it will be real, and real life is worth learning to live with. It’s slow, it’s tough, and it’s worth it.