What Butterflies Teach Us about Personal Change
The following is adapted from The Empowerment Paradox, by Ben Woodward.
Everything in the plant and animal kingdom is built to survive, adapting to its circumstances to preserve life at all costs. So, within nature, there is no shortage of metaphors for personal change. One of the best of these metaphors is the butterfly.
Butterflies grace everything from classic children’s books to ancient Greek symbolism. Humanity has long been fascinated with the mystery of the caterpillar’s miraculous transformation. Yet we don’t often talk about just how that process works.
It’s easiest to think of the metamorphosis in terms of addition, the caterpillar somehow growing wings from its body. There’s a struggle within the chrysalis, but all we see is the caterpillar emerging victorious as a beautiful butterfly.
However, beneath the protective layers of the chrysalis, there is something much more significant happening than growth alone. This is the powerful lesson we learn from the butterfly: before growth can occur, the old must be undone.
The Death of the Caterpillar
In becoming a butterfly, the caterpillar doesn’t slowly grow from one state to the other, as we can observe in a tadpole growing into a frog. The caterpillar is completely lost, replaced by something beautiful that has been forged in loss, struggle, and potentially pain. (Truthfully, we don’t know yet whether insects feel pain, but for the purposes of the metaphor, a time of undoing is certainly unpleasant.)
The loss of the caterpillar is full: inside the chrysalis, dormant genes within the caterpillar are activated, which then begins to dissolve its own tissue into a genetic soup. Then that free-floating material that was once a caterpillar begins to recreate itself into something new entirely.
For the butterfly to remake itself, the caterpillar must be completely undone.
Each of us has experienced something similar in our lives. Though no two of our “chrysalises” are alike, there is something activated within us once the struggle begins. Once we have received knowledge, experience, struggle, or suffering in some way, it undoes us.
We can’t return to our former innocence — that place of blissful ignorance — again, but we do have a choice that the butterfly does not: will we remain undone, or fight to emerge with new beauty and power?
The Pain of Transformation
The idea of innocence is difficult to let go of until we look closer at the definition of the word. The root comes from an old French word, in nocere, meaning “to not hurt.”
This could be thought of as the way that a little child hasn’t yet hurt anyone, embodying the guiltless, blameless, and harmless associations of innocence; or the way that we think of children as unharmed themselves, not yet touched by the challenges of life. Naïve, unknowing, and inexperienced.
I cannot say what the caterpillar feels as it dissolves into liquid — but I do know that the process isn’t pleasant for us. Therein lies another paradox of empowerment, because it’s in our nature to resist pain in spite of the fact that we need it for our progress. We are hardwired with survival mechanisms that send us running, resisting, or refusing to move until the danger has passed.
Yet we’re also gifted with ambition — a desire to explore, discover, and push the limits. The battle between self-preservation and self-authoring rages on, and the longer we refuse the transformation, the more prolonged that discomfort will be.
Becoming the Butterfly
As we mature and allow experience to replace innocence, we become something new. We’re no longer the romanticized child, and it’s up to us whether we remain undone or continue the work of re-creation.
Without intentionality, many of us spend years as miserly, pessimistic adults just trying to get on with our lives. What a waste of experience that is, for the butterfly is more beautiful and more capable than the caterpillar can ever be.
Whatever your chrysalis might be, there is great value in submitting to the undoing that it has activated. Unpleasant though it may be, there is greatness on the other side. With time, patience, and humility, you will one day emerge from the darkness into the warmth of the sun as a new creature with wings to fly to greater heights.
For more advice on personal change, you can find The Empowerment Paradox on Amazon.
Ben Woodward’s repeated personal experience with family trauma, chronic illness, and corporate crisis have taught and tutored him with intimate insight. The gained wisdom from such lessons have seen him thrive as a senior executive in multibillion-dollar companies, becoming the global president of a multinational corporation. He has served on the board of directors for trade associations, traveled to thirty countries as a keynote speaker, business leader, and entrepreneur, and most importantly, enjoys a wonderful home life with his wife Kim and seven beautiful children. To reach Ben, visit EmpowermentParadox.com.
