Butterfly

What is a butterfly?

OK so the obvious answer is that it is an insect. Look it’s just a bug! They’re pretty and all until you get them up close then they’re just another bug. Or maybe you get a more scientific answer; it’s the sexual reproductive part of the life cycle of a multi-part life cycle. You’ve got the egg, then the disgusting, voracious worm, then the half-dead chrysalis and finally the winged, breeder that flits aimlessly over my flower bed until it mates and dies.

These answers are correct if you’re a soul-less wanderer on the planet. If you have a soul, you will be able to see the butterfly as a metaphor for life. Quick- check. Do you have a soul?

We all start out life as an egg, full of potential but only potential. That hope for greatness is unrealized at that point. The only real goal as an infant is for survival and with luck, nurturing.

Then as life progresses. For the butterfly, an all consuming caterpillar, for a human a devouring teenager and young adult. The all consuming drive for self preoccupation and the ignorance of an impending tomorrow is the hallmark of this stage.

Small doubt that butterflies and humans hunker down in an immovable chrysalis. The drive seems gone. Life, for the butterfly seems gone. The process of life-- going to work, keeping a home, raising kids—seems to suck the life out of humans too.

Then finally the triumphant return. The blossoming of new life in a new form. The full expression of sacrifice transformed into riotous color and movement. For the butterfly there is finally the reproduction and cementing of new foundations for life. For humans, a chance to find perfect expression of the years of toil and suffering into a spiritual rebirth.

Have you ever watched a butterfly? Spend some time watching them flitting about in your sultry summertime yard. Have you ever seen anything so aimless? Like a scrap of brightly colored paper floating on the breeze. Have you ever tried to catch that delicate wanderer? Unless it’s injured, it is nearly impossible. It evades your touch with little effort, making a mockery of your attempts. Like the soul of a human, taking flight with delighted abandon, leaving earthly bonds and soaring heavenward without a backward glance at those attempting to check its flight.

Perhaps what we assign to lowly insect is actually the representation of the human soul. The magic of that flight leaves me breathless.

Tricky

As I sit here I feel like I am so close to the secret of life that I just have to write it all down.

Douglas Adams in his “Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy” reveals his answer to the secret of life. In his story, a culture of extraordinary beings decides they must know the secret of life. They expend huge amounts of resources and build the ultimate super computer. They fire it up and ask it to reveal the “secret of life, the universe and everything”. It replies that request is “tricky” and will require a long time to calculate. For a long period of time, I can’t remember exactly how long but for our purposes here let’s say a thousand years, the society goes along with just a little hint of smugness, secure in the knowledge that they will have the answer. When the computer finally, with great pomp and circumstance, reveals the answer the people are stunned. It’s “42”. A great hue and cry goes up. “What does that mean?” they shout. The computer inquires back, “So what’s the question?” The people then set out to create an even more fantastic computer to discover the question to the secret of life. Douglas Adams is writing the story so hilarity ensues. In my case, I’m not sure if I have the answer or the question but I feel that I may be onto something.

As we all have, I have had deaths in my family that affected me profoundly. Although these experiences had the finality of death in common, they were as unique as the people involved. They touched me and gave me the prospective I have on death. I’m not sure that I’m unique in my beliefs because it’s not a subject I share with others often. I sense the fear and loathing they experience when I start on the subject so I generally reverse course or touch it blithely and move on.

Part of the revulsion we all feel about death is that it doesn’t just happen to the principle character; it touches everyone with a relationship to the deceased. Some merely note an absence while others are ripped raw by the experience. The actual pain of the loss is dulled but the horror lingers like the taste of blood in your mouth.

That’s why writing about this subject may be cathartic for me. I know I have to get it out before I scream like a primal thing in the dark. I am losing someone very precious to me right now and feel powerless. I know I can’t stop it but I long to find a measure of control. I’d like to control the situation, snatch my beloved father from death’s icy jaws, but I know I can’t. I also know I can’t prevent the rising horror, the isolating grief from consuming me. All I have is my intellect and a desire to understand to hold me firm in the path of the monster.