Feature article from our March 2025 Newsletter
Is it just me or are there more butterflies around at the moment? You know... those really big ones? My friend saw one in her backyard the other day, as big as her hand!!!!
When I was a kid in Year 1 at school, a boy in the playground knowingly told me the life-cycle of the butterfly.
He said: It spends AGES as a caterpillar, eating eating, it has to eat as much as it can and get really fat, and then the fatness comes out it's bum as a thread to sew a cocoon, AND THEN it turns into goo inside, like a jar of snot, and THEN it comes out as butterfly!
Having read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, I felt this guy wasn't telling me anything new. In my mind, imagining at the time, I completed the moral of the story -
'And the butterfly is magnificent and splendid... the fruits of the labour of caterpillar-life in full display, karma -pure and simple- in action, effort bringing reward, suffering ending happily in beauty and grace!! A 'Hero's Journey' if you will!'
Year 1 boy: And then it only lives for a DAY!
There must have been a look of horror on my face, so the boy, drunk on his own power, reduced the lifespan of the butterfly to a few HOURS!
'They DIE they DIE!!! YES! They DOOOOOOOOO' said the gleeful 7 year old butterfly-catcher sociopath beside me.
I looked around, expecting butterflies to start dying mid-air and dropping to the ground. Maybe if I squinted, I could see through the deception of the fine sunny day, and this new reality of a living graveyard we call "life" might more clearly be able to reveal itself.
I was outraged - this was UNFAIR! If the truth was that all the pain and suffering of shitty caterpillar-life does NOT lead somewhere lastingly fantastic, then WTF?
For quite a while, from then on, I felt sad when I beheld a butterfly. 'It's just going to die', I would think. This is me, basically seeing something on its deathbed. I am witnessing an illusion... this haphazard flying that looks graceful, light, carefree, fluttery and joyful is actually a LIE! Its a prelude to death!
And meanwhile, other people exclaim, "how beautiful"!
OK, ok, before we all fall down the pit of despair, and the loneliness of knowing the hard truth, I have since learned that actually, some butterflies can live for up to a year. PHEW!! What a relief to know that the window of grace is open slightly longer than I was first led to believe, and, if the butterfly is actually a metaphor for sweet reward after effort, patience and challenge, it tells us there's a chance we can actually enjoy it a bit when we get there.
And here, right there - can you see it? Here is the obstacle in my story... the idea of 'getting there'.
Many of my clients, and myself too, struggle with a notion that we are healing in order to get somewhere. We are perfecting ourselves, getting rid of all the old broken stuff, clearing out the house, in order to be better versions of ourselves, to be in alignment with our soul's purpose, and at some point "enjoy" life.
Life, being something that is beautiful, easeful, graceful and in some ways divine and meaningful - something that has a bit of a shine to it - that we don't quite have yet.
Some people have said to me 'this isn't life!'
I witness people bumping up against the notion of not perfectly fulfilling their soul's purpose in life, and so rushing to fix or heal all their problems and internal wounds, so that living can truly start, so that their soul has a tiny sweet moment of expression.
Surely, the Meaning of Life, is TO LIVE? Right? There's not much time, so let's get on with it and get there!! Quick!
And during this, often quite stressful, 'fixing' time, we feel we are somehow failing, a bit broken, not good or fast enough. It's like we have a messy house, full of parts or broken things that don't make sense or fit together, a bit like the goo in a butterfly cocoon. Our internal sense of disconnection is overwhelming and disappointing.
We feel like, something is wrong, and we are waiting for it to be right.
Scale this perspective up to a communal level and there is perhaps a cultural perception, that we are doing something wrong by not correctly and sequentially learning from history, for repeating mistakes, for things not feeling perfect and fair.
Scale it back down, and as individuals we embody this grand communal disconnection as shame and anger - an example could be parents believing themselves to be doing a bad job if their kids are on screens seeking a sense connection, wonder and empowerment that time-poor adults are unable to offer, even though nuclear structured families and 4-walled boxy houses prevent our access to each other - no one can see in and see we need help, (though hiding our mess becomes easy), but we can't see out and so believe that we alone are the only ones suffering and doing it 'wrong'.
We fear the judgement of society - of each other and our own internal voices - people feel embarrassed or guilty to take a day off and recover or rest, we stifle our frustrations so others don't think we are bad or out of control, we elect unfair leaders who make bizarre decisions about our present and future, despite our education, humanity and resource pointing at better ways... the list goes on. It's like a notion of a lost belief in ourselves and each other.
And a lot of us feel very tired.
There is a sense that the world is not perfect, and that we are not perfect, yet.
There is even a sense that, perhaps, things are going around in circles or even getting worse! That idea of 'things spiralling out of control'.
And it might seem, like we are still dealing with the stuff we have always been facing, re-learning old lessons, but again. Lessons similar to the Sacred Laws of so many ancient people, known for so long.
The Laws of Respect, Love, Courage, Honesty, Wisdom, Humility and Truth.
And learning them the hard way - by experiencing their opposites.
I've come across a lot of clients, lately, who are angry that their life has been 'stolen' by the traumas they have faced. They feel that who and what they truly are is NOT their wounds (which of course they aren't), and so the wounds get pushed aside, or told to heal quickly, so that the REAL part of them can emerge from an enforced cocoon, to start living and RECLAIM or make up for the stolen time.
One lifetime can feel like not enough time to do this all this fixing. A voice might say, "Quick!! Fix all this messy, annoying, stuff I didn't even ask for!! I want to know what life feels like before I die! I want to know the purity of ME that I deserve without all the other shit!"
Of course, there is a beautiful grand-story woven into the judgement here, the idea that people are in charge of nature. That we are in control of the earth and our lives, and just not doing it right.
So many of my therapy sessions are just about slowing down. There is so much unspoken safety in slowing down. That old and gorgeous phrase, 'let's stop and smell the roses'. And, my God, do they smell glorious! So sweet! They slow our breath down so we can get as much sweet-smell in as we can on one inhale. Greedy, abundant smelling. I like to tell people, to really stick their nose in, get a good whiff. Smell as big as you can smell! A wish for bigger nostrils, bigger lungs type of a smell!
In slowing down we are able to look around and tentatively dip our toes into the waters of trust. Trust, that it is ok to spend some time on a particular wound or on what brings us joy. Trust, that it is worth the time. Trust, that this time is some life, meaningfully spent, focusing on something of value. Trust, that there is time.
And what is time, but a measure of life?
There is an ease and acceptance that can sometimes happen in this slower pace. This wound or joy is worthy not only of our time and loving attention, but it is welcome as a part of our lived experience.
Ouch! And also, ahhhh... relief.
Rumi says 'your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it'.
So, in slowing down, comes safety. In safety we find trust. And in trust we find the glimmer of hope we thought we had lost. The butterfly emerges, and flaps its wings. And the ripple effect is felt... through ourselves, through our families, through our communities.... and... through the ages.
As well as hope, we find so many other gorgeous things from this place of trust... we might find forgiveness, compassion, patience, acceptance, allowing. Even a willingness to let go of expectations. Beautiful peaceful stuff, but very hard to do without by-passing our til-now suppressed suffering.
This work that we do, right here, right now... is the deep work of awareness. This difficult work of feeling disappointment, pain and discomfort, meeting our edges, our inner-children and our shadows, taking it on, digesting and transforming, even though our soul KNOWS of a more beautiful world and wishes things were different.
Every day... as we grieve what our golden souls yearn to say more fully, right now... this work we do is a legacy that paves the way for that yearned-for world to exist.
"A society grows great when old men plant trees,
the shade of which they will never sit in"
(Afterlife Netflix series)
One legacy might be:
Being able to live freely and lovingly, in accordance with our soul's most beautiful truth.
The poet Mary Oliver asks the question 'what will I do with my one wild and precious life?' Perhaps, we are allowed to answer:
As much as I can, and as much as I can't, and everything in between.
And that is all part of it. And that is enough.
When we allow life to move through us, and with us and for us, we allow life, to be, life.
If life were the wind moving through the trees, the trees do not reach for the wind, the wind moves them... as it moves through them.
_______
Enjoy the butterflies, and, have a beautiful week.
Comments