Metamorphosis

As I write this, I am sitting outside on the back porch, looking up at a bright blue and cloudless sky. I feel the warm rays of sun on my back and the contrast of a cool breeze that makes this afternoon seem as if it was made just for me. A flash of dull orange flits by me. It is fitting that as I attempt to write my weekly blog advocating positive change, a monarch butterfly is dancing around the patio. Butterflies are an iconic symbol for the growth process and that is what I find myself reflecting on. Butterflies are beautiful and make flying look easy and fun. However, each butterfly started as a caterpillar: a creature that is slow, grounded, and relatively unbecoming, although still fascinating. Caterpillars consume. Then they disappear from the world, wandering from their homes, their places of comfort, then create a chrysalis, a shell if you will, and inside the confines of that shell is where the change takes place. This shell is integral to the process. It is the protection that allows metamorphosis to take place. According to howstuffworks.com, inside the chrysalis the caterpillar cells are broken down into imaginal cells or undifferentiated cells, meaning they can become any type of cell. They come back together in a new shape. This process can take a couple weeks or a few months. The website continues by saying that most people find grown butterflies and moths to be both beautiful and beneficial but may not feel the same about caterpillars. We, also, are like caterpillars and butterflies. We start out slow, plodding along, and focused on our most basic needs being met by the environment around us. Then, as we grow, either literally or metaphorically, we leave our old life behind. We move away from the comfort that we know into the realm of change: The Unknown. We create hard shells to protect ourselves from the environment that surrounds us as, internally, we strive to become something more than we were before. The harshness of the environment will determine how hard a shell we create. As we undergo this change, we become an unwritten page and our very cells become available to an infinite number of destinies. Any goal is not out of reach. We went into the cocoon slow, creatures of habit and emerge beautiful, unique and able to soar to any height. We can cover ground easily that once would have been unimaginable. The difference between between humans and butterflies is that we will undergo this process more than once in our lifetimes and be able to achieve greater heights than even the monarch. Whatever step in the process you are in, you are where you are meant to be. Each step is vital and cannot be skipped. And when we encounter someone who is in a different phase of the process, it is not for us to judge their progress but to recognize the beauty of the place they are in and offer encouragement for the journey. All of us can fly. Sometimes it takes two weeks, and sometimes it takes a whole winter, but after the time of change comes freedom and a new and beautiful perspective. Remember the butterfly and embrace metamorphosis this week. I believe in a world of infinite abundance; let us create it together.