The Truth About Transformation
Just ask the butterfly
Whenever I admire a butterfly — so colorful, so free — I can’t help remembering what it goes through to become a butterfly. Most extreme makeover ever.
It’s awful, actually. We talk glibly about butterflies as the symbol for transformation, but a closer look at what it takes to become a butterfly reveals a wrenching process no sensible caterpillar would willingly sign up for. The caterpillar destroys its organs; it liquefies some but rebuilds others; it changes its proportions and its purpose. It becomes a different creature entirely.
Maybe humankind hasn’t just gone completely insane. Maybe it’s just trying to become a butterfly.
Breaking down the caterpillar
In the analogy of a caterpillar-to-chrysalis-to-butterfly, humanity has probably left its caterpillar days behind. We’re in the chrysalis stage now, like it or not.
Why do I say this? Because, according to this elegant National Geographic article on the whole process, when it’s ready to transform, the caterpillar “releases enzymes that break down many of its tissues into their constituent proteins.”
