BUTTERFLIES AND BLOGS: A good match?
All you get is the pleasure of a completed task.
Scott Adams
If you've spent a sizeable chunk of your life playing around with words, naturally you're curious about any new ones that pop up. Blog, for example. Where did it come from? And who first used it? And how did it enter our everyday vocabulary? Unsurprisingly, I had to go to that now invaluable source of information - Google, of course.
The word 'blog' originates from the concept of a daily 'log' - maybe one kept by a ship's captain or data stored on a computer for a designated time. Back in 1997, it was called a 'web log,' then nicknamed 'We blog'. Finally it morphed into a noun, 'blog, blogger' and a verb, 'to blog.' Voilà! The rest, as they say, is history.
Has this brief deviation into English grammar anything whatsoever to do with that flower-loving insect called a butterfly? As Snoopy used to say, when writing his Great Novel, 'In part two I tie all of this together.'
After I hit seventy, not altogether a joyous landing, it
occurred to me I might try to summarise something of what I'd learned in those years. Like my son, who used to say, when he was about eight years old, 'I'm going to tell you all the French I know' that knowledge could have been written on a postage stamp. I hasten to add he now knows a great deal more! But in one sense, I'm a bit in the same predicament.
Two words easily summarise everything I've learned. Love. Forgiveness. Or to adopt Barack Obama's reply, when questioned by Bear Grylls on what advice he'd give his two daughters, he simply replied, 'Be helpful and be kind.'
When I wrote animal and pet care booklets, I was constantly thrown off course by the diverse views of the cognoscenti, namely the veterinary surgeons and scientists to whom the copy was sent for final checks and clearance.
Never was the old adage, ‘Ask three experts and get three different answers,’ more clearly demonstrated in all its infuriating and mind-bending ways. Consequently, I've learned that simplicity is not always considered desirable and everyone has a viewpoint to express. (I won't digress at this point on the mental quagmire, to say nothing of the paper mills that will be brought to a standstill on the Brexit negotiations.)
So trying to pull together slightly more words on what might be useful in living a peaceful life and helping to create a peaceful world, in however small a way, has not been an easy matter. Apart from age being a catalyst for a particular kind of soul searching, I'm a lifelong member of the Butterfly Club. Butterflies are always interested in a wide range of topics. It can be anything from how to tie a shoe lace faster through wondering how to comprehend the nature of the Higgs boson at which, I might add, I've had no success whatever. Not always brilliant with shoelaces either, if completely honest.
Butterflies tend to have snippets of knowledge rather than in depth understanding and rush from one exciting new piece of information to another with all the enthusiasm of a truffle hound in a chestnut forest. Therefore they have some difficulty in maintaining interest long enough in one thing to complete it, being always eager to see what new and exciting discovery is around the corner.
No member of this group, could ever envisage spending say, ten years researching and writing about one single American president. Before they’d got past the first week’s investigations, they’d be off and away on some intriguing fact about the Salem witch trials or what kind of tea was dumped in Boston harbour. None of which would probably bear the slightest relevance to the task in hand.
So as a fully paid up butterfly, trying to organise my mind on what I’d learned on the trip so far and find a structure in which to do it, has not been an easy matter. I had a problem. But hello! To every problem there is a solution and it seemed to me that the Blog could be it. But getting into my study and beginning work can often involve serious faffing. For a start, an absolutely tidy desk is essential. Meticulously organised. Every item in its place.
Very different from my late and wonderful husband, a scientist, whose desk often looked as if the recycling centre had erupted and dumped the entire contents of a dozen black plastic bags upon it - followed, or so it seemed, by a sharp gust of wind. This however posed no problem for him. Why, I once asked? 'Because,' he said, 'I have an organised mind.' Putting the boot in, he added, 'Unlike you!' Since I do have a disorderly mind that jumps from one subject to another like the nectar-seeking butterfly, I need to bring some kind of discipline into my musings.
If Scott Adams is right, and a blog simply offers, The pleasure of a completed task,' then maybe blog writing is a helpful discipline for training the mind. We shall see!