"Happiness is a butterfly" by PQHAÜS
(Acrylic on canvas / 30x40 inches / 2025)
We live our lives in constant motion, chasing after something we can’t quite define but are told we need: happiness. It starts early. We’re pushed to succeed in school, not because we love learning, but because it’s the “first step” toward a good job. Then the job becomes the next stepping stone—a means to build a secure life, to settle down, to get to the next goal. And so it goes, a cycle that keeps us running, convinced that happiness is always just a little further ahead.
But happiness isn’t something waiting for us at the finish line. It’s not hiding behind a promotion, a bigger house, or the “perfect” relationship. The truth is, it’s been there the entire time. Like a butterfly, it flutters quietly at the edge of our lives—fragile, fleeting, and easily overlooked. We’re too caught up in the noise, too focused on chasing the next milestone, to notice its presence.We tell ourselves we’ll be happy when we get that degree, when we land that job, when we’ve built the life we always imagined. But those moments come and go, and happiness remains elusive. It’s not that it wasn’t there; it’s that we didn’t stop long enough to see it. We’re so consumed by the next thing, the next step, that we miss the beauty of what’s already in front of us.
It’s only when we approach the end of our journey that we finally start to see things as they are. As life begins to slip away, the relentless forward motion stops. We have no more steps to take, no more goals to chase. And in that stillness, the truth becomes painfully clear: happiness wasn’t something we needed to find. It was always with us, in the quiet, ordinary moments we let pass unnoticed. We see it now, in the details we once ignored—the way sunlight warmed our skin, the way a friend’s laugh felt like home, the way even our struggles shaped us in ways we didn’t understand at the time. Happiness wasn’t the loud, dramatic thing we thought it would be. It was gentle, subtle, like the butterfly that danced beside us all along, too delicate to demand our attention but always there.
As the final moments approach, life feels startlingly like that butterfly. It flutters, fragile and fleeting, its beauty impossible to hold. We reach for it, but the more we try to grasp it, the more it slips away. Butterflies are not meant to be caught; they drift from flower to flower, never lingering, always moving. And so does life. It drifts, soft and unstoppable, until one day, it’s gone. In the end, we don’t mourn the absence of happiness—we mourn the time we spent chasing it, the blindness that kept us from seeing it was always there. Life, like a butterfly, was beautiful and temporary. Its wings brushed against us in every moment, but we were too busy looking ahead to notice.
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