Had a brief thought today. People like using the caterpillar to butterfly analogy to describe a process of metamorphosis from one thing to another. I started to think about that some more and it seems to me the analogy goes much deeper.
I like to think that when we are born we are like the caterpillar. We come into the world hungry and exploring, exposed to dangers we don't really comprehend. We crawl and discover, eating and growing.
But from the moment we are born we begin to learn the ways of the world. Society teaches us what we can and can't do, what is acceptable and not. And as we feed on this we get full and build our cocoon.
I don't believe it is an inevitability that we will emerge from the cocoon as a butterfly. We may not emerge at all. The cocoon is built of all the constructs of how we were taught to view the world. We see the world through its walls. It is safe and comfortable. Why would we leave?
As we question things the walls of the cocoon may thin. This lets our view of the world change. But are we willing to break through this final construct and emerge? That is where it takes faith in yourself. Faith that what you are seeing is where you need to be.
Can we break through our constructs of this world and emerge as a butterfly? Do we even want to? These are questions that each person has to answer for themselves.
