Blog 3956 – 09.22.2026
The Elusive Butterfly
In nineteen sixty-six, most of which I spent at the idealized age of fifteen, one of the most popular songs on the radio was Bob Lind’s Elusive Butterfly. The song is about chasing the bright elusive butterfly of love. The wise old owl in today’s picture reflects that like the honky tonk song says that we are looking for love (happiness) in all the wrong places. Only the echo of love and happiness exists in the past and only the hope, the dream, of them in the future. Today is the only place we can find them and if we look in this right place we will find that the words of another song from my youth are real, “Love (happiness) is all around me. It’s every where I go.”
Contrary to the first song neither love, happiness, nor butterflies are all that elusive. In 1921 American writer Max Erhmann wrote a piece called Desiderata about finding happiness in this jaded world. He published it in 1927. In the mid nineteen-sixties of my youth it became popular again. I find it still encouraging after all these years:
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
theencouragingword 