I’ve been sitting in some experience, waiting for wisdom, since Christmas. Practicing non-reactivity, allowing reflection. This is a new practice for me.
What started as an intentional pause, become curious uncertainty and now seems to have settled into some knowledge.
The wisdom is yet to come.
Perhaps you’ve experienced something like it– see, I saw something that showed me the contrast of choices and priorities. How two people can appraise the same situation in such opposite ways. How our actions reflect our values (this I knew) and our reactions reflect our inner state (this is new).
Since my inner state is in flux– it feels like these last two years have been a cocoon and I dissolved into goo and am rebuilding.
Also, YES. Caterpillars do not simply sprout into butterflies like a seed into a flower, they almost completely dissolve, keeping only the very few parts of them that will serve them as butterflies. I can’t make this up. I learned this from my kindergartner.
It makes so much sense.
Of course you don’t just hide for awhile and miraculously change, bippity boppity-new. Transformation like that is grotesque and painful. Miracles are brutiful.
A caterpillar (I still struggle to spell that word), releases enzymes or something that dissolve most of itself.
But the thing is, before it nearly destroys itself, it builds protection. In order to transform, it needs a safe space to dissolve it’s Self and then REBUILDS NEW organs, legs, everything.
The caterpillar is a phoenix, returning with wings.
Completely different.
I feel like I’ve done the dissolving part, maybe right now I’m still in my cocoon, flexing my wings against the confines, gaining strength, stepping into my new self. Or maybe I’m still growing new pieces. I hope I’ll always be growing new pieces.
I’m grateful I had a safe space to dissolve and change, otherwise I’d just be caterpillar soup.
My wish for you today is that you get a safe space to stay in while you can become yourself.
That’s all you need to be, is yourself. You’re the only one who can do it.
You are loved. By me and others.
Pretty Good Ugly 