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.