LightBears

This morning I became totally enraptured, overjoyed, and enthralled by a website devoted entirely to butterflies

I stumbled across a meme that I found so very, very touching. It said something to the effect of “Your time as a caterpillar has expired, your wings are ready.” Can you imagine the confusion that might have caused for the little one receiving that note?

Then later I saw one that said “how does somebody become a butterfly? They have to want to learn to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.” 

And finally, a little later on, I saw: “the best and happiest moment in your life is when you find you have the courage to let go of what you can’t change.” 

Life is full of changes.

Some are those for which we’ve been praying for a very long time, and when they come, they’re in a shape that we don’t recognize they are what we had been asking for. Sometimes the change that comes in response to the half-forgotten prayers can feel good, or sometimes it can be a shock! Not every change arrives with a little handwritten note attached to it saying “Hope you like this gift, this is what you’ve always asked for! “

In order to change we must be willing to give up what we have been accustomed to.  This may be in the form of the physical shape that we have been wearing (maybe we walk hunched a bit because we’ve gotten used to using a crutch or a cane), the long-term relationship that we have been in, the beliefs that we have always unquestioningly held, the one person that we couldn’t live without, our old and tiring but familiar job, etc.  There are so many different things that we’ve become used to!

How we greet change really is up to us, and the choice we make about how we greet the change can have a huge impact on what the change actually becomes in terms of our experience. If we see change as a loss of something, then do we grieve it?

If we grieve it, can we let it go with a smile and a tear and let the change come in as a welcome and yet unknown possibility?

Or do we look at the change and say “I never wanted this to happen!”  And we can try to push it away, try to shove it through the doorway and slam the door shut on it, put locks on the door, etc. 

But once change comes, it’s mighty hard to close the door on it and say “go away, I changed my mind, just forget about it.”

 Change comes and it’s here to stay. We can offer it a chair before the fire, offer it a cup of tea, and sit, talk, try to get to know it. 

Or we can try to throw it out the door – still not possible, but we can try.  We can let it twist us up inside, make us bitter because we didn’t want that change to happen.

Or we can see that the time for us to be a caterpillar has expired, have the courage to put on our wings, and we can take to the air.  We may feel a bit odd, perhaps a bit clumsy, but sooner or later we can taste the wind, soar toward the sun, drink the dew of a morning flower, and savor every moment of our life as a butterfly until our time in the sun is done. 

So the question really is, what is change, who are we at the time that the change arrives, and how will we meet it.  Are we rigid, perhaps frightened? Will we resist it with every fiber of our being and, through resisting, be changed unwillingly into someone we are not happy being? Can we be flexible and flow with the change? Can we become comfortable with it, accept it into ourselves, and let it shape us into something new, different, maybe better? The possibilities are really endless.

Coming back to the overwhelming beauty of the butterfly that I saw earlier today on someone’s website, its beauty is ephemeral, transient, impermanent. A caterpillar thinks it lives forever and has no understanding that it will become a puddle of goo (most likely assume it is dying) and then transform into an entirely different creature. We are human beings in a physical form, we are spirits within a human form, and I guess one could say that we are caterpillars waiting to become butterflies.

It’s hard to accept that nothing is permanent, nothing is forever, except change and growth. The oldest tree on the earth sooner or later will move on to a different shape and perhaps fall,

the biggest rock or mountain will sooner or later become smaller and smaller and ultimately a grain of sand.

The sea, the vast and beautiful ocean, is always changing, and the land it touches is also always changing. 

So, too, are we changing, and ideally in changing we accept it gracefully and become a beautiful butterfly and savor our new-found freedom.

From the moment of inception, we’re always learning and growing, we’re always changing and becoming.  When the final change comes and we comprehend that it is time to depart our physical form, I hope that for most of us we are able to accept it as yet just another change, another step forward, into an unknown experience, just as much as the caterpillar steps forward into the new form of a butterfly. 

I look forward to becoming part of a swarm of beautiful jewel toned butterflies, swirling around on the winds, landing on trees and bushes and flowers at random, perhaps being eaten by a bird, or perhaps just settling down and in a quiet way letting go and moving on to the next step.

I wish you all comfort, peace and acceptance in each step that you take in your life, and may you savor each bit of it with as much gusto as the newly emerged butterfly, swirling in the warmth of the sun!