Editorial New Year’s Transformations What’s a caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly got to do with us? Turns out, a lot. By Michelle Theall In 1971 Willy Wonka teleported Mike Teevee across a room in bits and pieces to reassemble inside a television set. Far-fetched? Not in the least. It happens every day—or at least once a year. If you’re thinking that the oxygen-thin Colorado air may be killing my brain cells, consider that the Monarch butterfly starts out as a caterpillar. It’s one thing to grow from an egg to an adult and quite another to change form altogether. The caterpillar grows from larva into a pupa. Nothing special there, really. But then it forms a chrysalis and digests itself down to a liquid—organs, tissue, everything. All the body parts rearranged and somehow better for it. Think Picasso. Butterflies emerge and soar as a brilliant work of art. 
The transformation of muted caterpillar to vibrant butterfly is one of nature’s miracles that we often forget about a few years after grade school. But the start of a New Year has me examining the mystery of metamorphosis. For example, a caterpillar blends in with her surroundings, but a butterfly dances with color. A caterpillar tastes and chews with its mouth; it eats leaves. A butterfly smells with its feet and drinks nectar with its strawlike tongue. The caterpillar’s body is sturdy and muscular. The powdery stripes, spots, and checkered wings of a butterfly are as thin as tracing paper. The irony is that on those fragile wings, a butterfly can log more than 1,000 miles. As a caterpillar, she’d have never traveled more than a few square yards from her home. Perhaps what’s most astounding is that the caterpillar waits until she’s full-grown before changing into a butterfly with a 14-day lifespan. Why become something so stunning and fully realized just before dying? Maybe it’s because she can or because she’s destined to do so. Or perhaps it takes most of one’s life to achieve complete self-realization. Though human beings don’t change our basic outward form, we definitely go through major transformations. We digest life lessons, rearrange them, shed what doesn’t work, and often head in new directions. Our growth might be less dramatic at times than the caterpillar’s metamorphosis, but it’s real and usually comes from the work of gutting the house before the remodel. As the year begins anew, I could attempt to fulfill the same resolutions I make and break within the first three months of every New Year, or I could take the bits and pieces of the most unfulfilled parts of my life—regrets included—absorb them, and evolve and transform into my better self in a more natural way. Somewhere inside each of us, color, texture, and brilliance wait for tiny cues that we’re ready to emerge from the relative safety of the cocoon. It’s a time to believe in miracles, teleportation, metamorphosis, and perhaps even Willy Wonka. Break free, step off the edge, and fly. |
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