As I get older, for whatever reason I have started to feel the need to get involved. I often find myself asking the Universe for this, that or the other, but one day realized I wasn't really offering the Universe anything for its trouble. I believe in karma. To paraphrase Wiki karma is the sum of an individual’s deeds making him/her responsible for his/her own life, and the pain and joy it brings to him/her and others.

So the question became, get involved with what? I am not what you would call a real people person. I definitely prefer my cats to a chat with the neighbor or worse yet, a conversation with the stranger in line behind me at the grocery. No, a people person I am not. But I do love animals and nature and most things that humans seem to sacrifice in an attempt to get something for nothing. (I am not at all sure, however, I could install a composting toilet in my home, never eat processed food again, or try to figure out which package of underwear at the store is the most socially conscious choice - all possible topics for future blog entries.)

The combination of my love of outdoors, gardening, and nature in general and distaste for chemicals (and maybe a little push from the Universe) directed me to a local Metro Park and its lecture series on gardening a little greener. It was because of that lecture series I discovered that same Metro Park not only has a butterfly house, but seeks volunteers for the butterfly house. So I took the orientation and signed up.

I have always had a fascination with butterflies and working in "the House" let me see them in every stage of development, tell other people about them, and learn more about them for myself. To some I know it sounds tedious, but for me it is great fun. Of course, some people may be asking, "How the heck does explaining to someone why a butterfly is a butterfly and a moth is a moth ring up the karma points on the Universe's slot machine?" Is it too big of a reach to say it depends on your reaction/answer to the following question; "If you go back in time and step on a butterfly, does it affect the future?"

Forget for a moment that the true “Butterfly Effect” really has nothing to do with the idea of time travel. I didn’t know that when I first pondered that question. I came across that question somewhere around the end of grade school or start of junior high. Long before the movie (which I have never seen) and long before I read about the larger concept from which it derives. I have always remembered the day I read that question for the first time. That is the day my fascination of butterflies began.

I don't know why of all the moments in my life my brain holds on so tightly to that one, but it does. I don't know for certain why I decided to take the lecture series on green gardening, but I did. Now, I am a butterfly house volunteer. Will this fact change the world? If it did would I ever know? Maybe or maybe not. Either way I find it fascinating how a thread of a thought can survive in my brain for years eventually leading me to something that I have seemingly come across by coincidence.