Metamorphosis
It is said that a caterpillar has no idea it will one day become a butterfly. That when it cocoons itself off to build a chrysalis, it doesn't know that something beautiful is about to happen. That it has no idea, the amount of radical transformation it's about to undergo, right down to its organs. So radical, that it's almost magical.
The metamorphosis of a caterpillar is one of the many, many, many astonishing transformations that happen in nature. In fact, the golden rule for nature is so simple - change is necessary. Yet, we humans, despite being part of nature, recoil at the thought of change. It's not completely our fault though. Years of evolution has drilled into our heads an innate need for food and shelter - symbols of comfort and stability. We now actively seek comfort and familiarity. But change, on the other hand, involves so many things that represent the opposite of what we naturally want. Change is often synonymous with the following things:
1. Getting out of your comfort zone
Change almost always requires you to venture out of comfort and stability, into instability and a lack of structure that's familiar. To form new rules, to establish new habits and to adapt new methods in our day to day life.
A constant example on this website: Trying to get fit.
2. Loss of control
Change usually entails some chaos. And for our brain, uncertainty is BAD. Bad like flashing neon lights bad. So not only do you have to get out of your comfort zone, you literally have to swan dive off a cliff for some changes with hopes that it will all fall in to place. How is that not terrifying?
Example: Relocating.
3. Am I good enough for this?
Sometimes, something that we are trying to change is connected to our perceived aptitude in some form or another. Which almost always brings us to the question of "Am I good enough to do this?" and for some of us, no further than that.
Example: Quitting a job to pursue your passion.
4. Loss of "face"
"But what if I do this and I fail?". If you have decided that you are good enough for the change you are about to make, another element of self doubt that will stop you is that of failure and thereby looking "bad" to society.
Example: You have wanted to try a long bob since forever but you're scared how it would turn out on you.
5. Sometimes, it actually is terrifying. This is not our fault.
Example: The world as a whole circa November 2016.
But the thing is, we need change. Almost on a daily basis: "You will never change your life until you change something you do daily." - John C. Maxwell.
Now, what this quote means to me is that when you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you're in a stasis. You're not doing something new or something different for you to try what works best for you and to create learning opportunities for yourself. We need to repeatedly change things in our lives, until we find that one thing that will cause a butterfly effect and ripple across all elements of our life. Because change creates growth. We need to produce change that will make us become better students and workers. We need to accept changes to be better in our relationships. We need to embrace change to become better people overall.
What doesn't help with our hesitance towards change is how some of us have an unhealthy relationship with the concept of change. Making drastic changes over the course of one day, or to be precise, at the chime of midnight on a particular day, giving up when the one change we attempted to make fails, or simply feigning ignorance when everything is in chaos. Sound familiar? You see, a caterpillar sheds layers upon layers of itself over quite some time to become the butterfly it was meant to be. Likewise, change is something that will require stripping layers of what we perceive as our elements, which will take time and effort. When we decide to change something in our life, we need to truly want the change, see the reason for it. Otherwise, the change has no purpose and no longer serves as a necessity. When we decide to change something in our life, we need to fully understand the process of what is about to happen, to not skip steps or have unrealistic expectations over the time the change will take since it's a process and not a switch. When we decide to change something in our life, we need to expect a little chaos, that we would have to think our feet as we go, and not see it as a clear cut method with clear cut results such as slicing onions (Bad analogy? Cut just makes me think of knives).
Making a change in our life is just about similar to metamorphosis because we are creating our own metamorphosis. We need to embrace the caterpillar that we are right now. We need to embrace the changes that will cause our metamorphosis - understand them, plan for them, and give them time. We need to trust the process and that we will emerge as beautiful butterflies at the end of our metamorphosis.
And most importantly, we shouldn't allow ourselves to become the caterpillars we once were again.
