A caterpillar is hatched from a tiny egg. It grows up, it yearns for greatness, it starts to climb taller and taller trees. It feels the wind on its back, the sun on its face. It grows bigger and stronger by the day.
One day, the caterpillar experiences a shock. At the peak of its strength, it becomes completely dysfunctional. Its happy, productive life of leaf-munching turns into crippling paralysis. The caterpillar hides, retreats into its pain. It spins itself a silk cocoon for protection.
Inside the cocoon, the world is dark and cold. The pain is unforgiving. It feels like it will last a million years. The caterpillar begins to melt from the inside out. It doesn’t understand what is happening. It cries and cries. Death itself would be more forgiving, easier to bear than this.
Why? it asks God. Why is this happening to me?
Time comes and goes. The caterpillar loses all sense of reality. It longs for the sun, but there is nothing but darkness, black velvet draped all around it like an endless night. As it grows used to the solitude, it tries to think on the bright side. At least it’s not dead. That’s something.
Or maybe it is. Because on some level the caterpillar realizes that the creature it once was can never, ever come back.
Soon the caterpillar grows restless. Everything still hurts, but the pain is easier to tolerate. As the caterpillar learns to see in the dark, it re-evaluates the whole world from its tiny silk sarcophagus. It feels many things shifting deep inside, but these changes still need time to crystalize.
An eternity passes by. The caterpillar dreams of breaking free. It doesn’t feel ready to leave its cocoon, but it cannot bear to stay isolated much longer. As it debates whether to stay or to leave, a deep sense of longing settles into its still-beating heart.
It misses the trees, the breeze, the midsummer skies. It yearns for life. It never wants to suffer that much ever again, but at least now it’s prepared to face the cruel realities of the world. Right when it stops being afraid of the dark, it glimpses, through thinning silk, the first rays of light.
With a flourish, it tears down its silk sanctuary, only to discover the biggest shock of all: four huge wings unfurling on its back, glittering, iridescent—powerful. It’s not the outside world that has changed the most, but the creature formerly known as caterpillar! Earth-bound no longer, now a resplendent beauty of the skies.
To the outside world, the transformation is graceful and magical, bewildering to behold. Only the caterpillar understands the true cost of growing wings.
So today, my dear reader, on my 27th revolution around the sun — tell me this:
What would you be willing to metamorphosize in order to take flight?
