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I was watching a documentary the other day about something that I can’t recall, but what I do remember is the brief discussion and illustration of the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. The narrator explained that the caterpillar’s metamorphosis from a creature whose only mode of transportation is via its legs to a beautiful winged creature with the ability to fly is no easy feat. In fact, not all caterpillars survive the process.
Damn. You mean to tell me that I decided to “trust the process” but it didn’t work? Mannnnn, I can’t speak to that. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.
Just watching it unfold before my eyes was daunting enough for me to say no to the process if I were in its shoes. However, the rewards definitely seemed to outweigh the risk. Wait. So I can be a butterfly? Hell yeah, my dude. I’d probably shed my low-level caterpillar life, too.
Speaking of shedding, in order to become a butterfly, the caterpillar must essentially eat and digest itself while holed up in its new place of residence, a cocoon specifically built for the purpose of transformation. Hol’ up? Eat myself? That’s not what I signed up for, bruh. What kind of sadistic sh*t is this?
During all of this, I couldn’t help but see myself and us in the life of a caterpillar.
In order for us to transform or metamorphose into the person that we were put on this Earth to be, there are aspects of ourselves that we must eat, digest, and grow into something new. There are many things about our past and even our present that simply no longer serve us and will not usher us into the state of being that we need to inhabit to share our gifts with the world. Another thing that I realized—or actually that was confirmed—is that everything we need to become who we were purposed by design to be is already within us. The butterfly was already in the caterpillar from birth.
Who do you want to be? The caterpillar or the butterfly?
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This post was originally published on rebelwithapen.com, and is republished here with the author’s permission.
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Photo credit: Boris Smokrovic on Unsplash