A Butterfly

My little brother and I watch a show called "Scrubs," mostly the reruns from older seasons on Comedy Central.

I know that the show is a hit or miss for a lot of people, but it's not always about the humor or the emotional content of a show, and sometimes ideas and connections come from weird places. Trust me, a TV show on Comedy Central is one of the last places I expected to be posting on this blog about.

In the third season of Scrubs there is an episode called "My Butterfly." The focal point of the episode is, as the title might suggest, about a butterfly, but more specifically about the way in which even where a butterfly lands can affect someone's entire day.

What the episode tries to emphasize is the little things and, while the narrator might not be entirely aware of this, there are even subtler things than the outcome of a butterfly's landing that impact his day.

Think about it like this:

If someone smiles at you on the bus, you might be in a good mood. Your being in a good mood might cause you to be a bit more forgiving on that particular morning, being particularly tolerant of a late person, whether a co-worker or an employee. Whatever.

Your tolerance of that person might raise their self-confidence and motivate them. Their personal motivation might lead to an improvement in their work (because it's a well known fact that when people are confident they work better) and that might lead to success for the company, for that individual and all those surrounding them. If that is, say, an employee of yours, that's good for you directly, but even if it's a co-worker, the benefit that your co-workers have indirectly on you is significant because they keep things moving in the company, which means you have a job.

Imagine working under conditions where you are happy and everything is going ideally. It's nice, pleasant, even if it's work.

When you are working in conditions that you don't like, it's like your own personal hell.

Sometimes, a smile on a bus or a subway train or on the street is the difference. Sometimes it's a friendly greeting. Sometimes it's a butterfly flapping it's wings a little bit longer.

It's not always that simple, in fact it's usually not that simple, but it remains true that the impact we have on those events, both in benefitting from them and distributing them (made much easier when we are benefitting from them) is incredible.

This is just my opinion, just my outlook, but it seems like it's really important (when you think about things this way) that you are conscious of how others percieve you. Not necessarily in what they think of you as far as how you look and who you are, but in terms of how you feel about them and, as a result, how that makes them feel about themselves and the rest of the world.

That consciousness is something that takes a lot of time (I am fairly sure that I'm going to be working on it the rest of my life, maybe longer if I'm lucky). It's just something to think about when you don't feel like appearing happy, when you don't feel oblidged to do it today, because you don't want to. Think about the impact that it will have on others.

As far as I'm concerned (I'm not the Dalai Lama, so I'm not necessarily concerned the same way a guy like him is, but it's still relevant) karma isn't just about the big things you do and the gifts that you give, physically speaking. It's about how consistently you make people feel welcomed in your own way. It's about how you greet people and your ability to be conscious of how everything you do affects those people because, trust me, it does.

If a butterfly affects people, you can be sure that you do.