if you really want to fly...

"Hope for the Flowers" is the story of a caterpillar named Stripe who watched fellow caterpillars climbing and stepping on and over others with no idea about what was at the top. When he asked others what was at the top, the answer was, "No one knows, but it must be awfully good because everybody’s going there."

Stripe tried for a while and even met a lovely female caterpillar named Yellow, and they tried together and gave up together. Stripe tried again, and one day, as Yellow was waiting for Stripe to come back, she discovered a grey caterpillar struggling to get out of a cocoon. She offered to help, but the grey caterpillar said, "No, I have to do this to become a butterfly."

Yellow asked, "What is a butterfly?"

The grey caterpillar replied, "It is what you are meant to become. It flies with beautiful wings and joins the earth to heaven. It drinks only nectar from the flowers and carries the seeds of love from one flower to another. Without butterflies, the world would soon have few flowers."

Yellow asked, "How does one become a butterfly?"

The grey caterpillar replied, "You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."




I thought about that story today as I went down the running trail. How easy is it for us to get stuck in a rut, follow the same old routine, and stay on the ground, wishing we could fly but being unwilling to undergo the metamorphosis? Beautiful butterflies are not born that way. They become. They give up the relative safety of living on solid ground to take a risk and reach higher, become more beautiful than they have ever been.

It's been a better week for me. I've eaten healthier - not on a diet, thank you - and made myself move more and found some very useful ways to let off steam and anxiety that do not involve peanut butter M&Ms. I found out this morning I let go of two and a half pounds over the past week, which a friend gleefully reminded me is ten sticks of butter. I was torn between my celebratory mood at having dropped the weight and disturbing visions of my body made completely out of butter (with bar-shaped chunks now removed).

I want to fly. I do. I know I'm going to need to resist the urge to buck against the cocooning process: there are some areas of my life that need to be altered, and I just don't like change that much, even good ones. I need to stop treating living healthy like a phase, which I've done time and time again. I'm going into this with a lot of faith and a not-so-great track record - I'm acutely aware that there is an entire congregation of people (literally) who witness the amazing yo-yo effect I do every 8-9 months, and it's a little unnerving to me, feeling like the Great Fluctuation.

So, here's to one more day of the butterfly effect. And one after that, and another after that. For now, though, I'm just working on today's cocoon.