I think I first heard this phrase from Ido Portal (his webpage is posted below). It has been a phrase and lesson that life has constantly and continuously been making present to me through various circumstances. Clearly, this is a challenging pill for me to swallow.
Loving and living my early twenties is a blessing and curse.
While I feel somewhat in my "prime", having natural youth and vitality at my fingertips for just a little while longer, each year that passes I come to realize how short this will last and just how important the practice is over time, whatever the practice may be. With this natural youth and vitality due purely to age, I find myself filled up with a constant buzz of ambition.
Ambition is great, as it is an ingredient for persistence and perseverance.
However, too much ambition is just as bad as none.
This is where I find myself lately.
Too much ambition, no direction.
I want to do everything and be everywhere all at once.
I want to do "great things".
The thing is…if you just keep doing…little by little, great things happen.
So, do the do.
When there is too much ambition and no direction, it can feel like I'm so "far behind". The thought of feeling behind can ruin everything if I let it, because it is a major lie one can believe. We as humans can only do so much…and the rest is left to synchronicity. So, just do what you can do, now.
This overload of ambition is what can crush the butterfly. It's like a baby, so eager to walk but hasn't yet learned to stand.
The strength in ambition's drive can quickly turn into greed and devaluation of one's own experience. It fuels the wanting to be somewhere other than where you are at.
We are all right where we need to be, when we need to be…simply because we all ARE.
Dance and the butterfly will dance with you. Try to chase and catch it, and you will crush and kill the very thing you wanted.
Just do the doing, step by step, & let go of the rest.
