have a happy butterfly life
Sawadee khrap,
Welcome to the latest 444. My name’s Max. I’m a yoga teacher and photographer travelling Asia. 444 is my monthly piece reminding me to trust my path. I hope it offers a moment to connect with yours.
Each month I write something 4 me, 4 you, and 4 us on the fourth at 4:44 from wherever I am in the world. Today I’m writing to you from a permaculture farm in Ban That in Northeast Thailand.
The land is flat, but everything else is smiling. Fields are full of rice where butterflies flutter and dance.
Eight-year-olds joyride custom scooters. Sidecars, parasols, and entire shops attach to Scoopies. They meet at the concrete slab by the big pond that pops up into a market twice a week. The sounds of whippa snippas swap for deep fryers. Hundreds of stalls crisp up anything you can think of as the sun sets over the plains.
4 me - simplicity
It’s becoming hard to focus attention. The privilege of choice. There’s so much to try, yet prioritising is difficult.
Basing myself on a small farm in North Thailand is a reminder of the clarity in limitation. Spaces with fewer options allow what I have to thrive.
Perhaps an experience’s richness is only felt when letting go of other experiences.
Can this mindset carry into more stimulating environments?
4 us - butterfly eyes
I read a piece about remembering people through their eyes. The way they see the world carries into how we see the world.
Last year, our Vedic priest during yoga training was the epitome of joy. A small old man with an everlasting sparkle in his eyes.
Pandit Ji spoke signature monologues. Progressively he’d cackle and bubble up into hysterical laughter. His words became incomprehensible. A contagious joy bursting the entire room to laughter.
Pandit Ji’s speeches followed similar routes. Reminding us that we’re nature, the small things being the big things, and a symbolic ending about butterflies. Between full-body chuckles, in stitches, he’d bless us all to ‘have a happy butterfly life’.
A year apart butterflies perk my attention. A garden of reminders. When one flutters past it holds a cue that there’s joy available somewhere in this moment.
4 you - remembering through others’ eyes
My favourite words from the piece:
A friend who loves the moon makes you notice moons.
A cousin obsessed with books makes you linger longer in bookstores.
Someone who points out dogs everywhere permanently alters your walks.
Someone who loves poetry makes you read signboards differently.
Someone who notices sunsets teaches you to look up.
What traces of someone lives in your eyes?
See you next month,
Max
