Updated by: July 10, 2026

The Butterflies

Experiences & Activities

You see them all day on the Camino. White ones mostly, sometimes orange, lifting off the path a few steps ahead of you.

They never fly straight. A bird has somewhere to be. A butterfly doesn’t. It rises, drops, doubles back, lands on a thistle for two seconds and changes its mind.

Most of them live a few weeks. Some only days. You’d think that would make them hurry.

Alan Watts said we treat life like a pilgrimage, a journey with a serious purpose at the end. Get to the destination, and you’ve made it. But we missed the point. “It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played.”

I have a destination. Bordeaux, four days from now. Booked and confirmed. The butterflies are on the same path, and they don’t seem to know it goes anywhere.

I stopped to watch two of them this morning, dancing around each other above a wheat field. They knew it was a musical thing.

Paul Mercuri
Wake Up Here Founder

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