Shades of Chartreuse: Freshly Green Tips from Here We Are

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Last week, a good friend gave me a card with this saying simply because she saw it and remembered that I like butterflies. The gesture was such a sweet one that it made me feel happy all day which motivated me to encounter others with extra courtesy. On Earth Day, the idea is to focus on what we can do to help the environment as a whole by exploring ways to live greener in an effort to aid Mother Nature's burdensome task. Unfortunately, the message is getting clouded by commercialism; it may be time to begin again in our own backyard.

On the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, I'd offer the idea of acting kinder toward each other and ourselves. We can continue to reduce, reuse, and recycle our tangible output, but expending positive, vibrant energy toward others will have an immediate effect on our personal "environment." It is easy to be the Butterfly Effect in another person's life; any gesture of kindness mimics the flapping wings of a butterfly to represent, "a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events." 

How will you flap your colorful wings and brighten someone's day? Today? Tomorrow? Has someone caused a Butterfly Effect in your life?