Arrived

Part 2 of let me count the ways

Dear Reader,

I am currently visiting family in southern India and I am imagining this email is an old-fashioned letter - arriving in your inbox, a slightly battered envelope from a faraway land. There are many pages to this letter, covered with my nearly-illegible scrawl, and filled with all the news/thoughts I want to share, so many that I’m compelled to write in the margins of the pages, using arrows and multiple PTO’s (please turn over) to direct you to the next urgent sentence. Though it’s been decades, I still remember the thrill of receiving such a letter, fingers fumbling to quickly tear open the envelope, the occasional photograph sliding out from between the pages. In retrospect, (retrospect being such a know-it-all) I realize I felt seen and remembered and cherished when I received a letter. (So many different words for love.) Older family members would sometimes fill an entire letter with news of the local weather, but when they wrote about the exceptionally hot summer the city was experiencing or the monsoon that had finally arrived in the Western Ghats, I now know they were actually saying “I love you. Remember you’re loved. ”

This retrospective discovery of love makes it no less potent. In fact, it returns something I didn’t even know I had lost.

Reader, what is your favorite letter memory?

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It’s been raining here almost everyday, mostly just for an hour or two in the evenings, but yesterday, the rain started late and continued through the night. There was a lot of thunder and lightning, and we briefly lost power, but now that it’s morning again, the sun is out. The rain has shaken loose the pinwheel flowers (what a happy name!) and coral jasmine and they dot the road outside the neighbor’s house. Last night’s heavy rain also caused hundreds, if not thousands, of little cream-yellow flowers from the blackboard tree outside my room to fall on the ground, creating a fragrant floral carpet. The butterflies and bees don’t seem to care about the rain or that it’s not spring. They buzz, and swoop and dive between the branches of the tree outside my window, happy with the flowers that remain. When I am here, and watching the butterflies play, I’m convinced they know some giddy secret about life.

“Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?"

"It is if you first become a part of nature. You suppress your presence as a human being, stay very still, and convince yourself that you are a tree or grass or a flower. It takes time, but once the butterfly lets its guard down, you can become friends quite naturally."

― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 1

Dear Reader, I’m going to try making friends with the butterflies.

" ... I come here every day, say hello to the butterflies, and talk about things with them. When the time comes, though, they just quietly go off and disappear. I'm sure it means they've died, but I can never find their bodies. They don't leave any trace behind. It's like they've been absorbed by the air. They're dainty little creatures that hardly exist at all: they come out of nowhere, search quietly for a few, limited things, and disappear into nothingness again, perhaps to some other world.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 1

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When I sit on the balcony and watch the butterflies, I find myself thinking again of what it means to have arrived. Material success, relational joy, triumph over life’s odds? All of the above? Is arrival always temporary? Rather than a happily-ever-after, is arrival a mile-marker?

Is arrival a momentary acknowledgement you have achieved what you set out to do? In that case, is it audacious to decide you have arrived? Does someone else (the world) have to sign off on your arrival?

I’d love to hear what you think.

Best,

Priya

PS: I’m going to update this post with a video of the butterflies and you can click on the Open in app or online to see it.

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