Metamorphosis

I bought a Live Butterfly Kit for my 4 year old daughter so that she can learn and visualize the different life stages of a butterfly. The package came with a cup with 5 live caterpillars (with ample air and food supply inside the cup) and a kit to move them around as they transitioned through the different stages. My daughter was wondering “Where are the butterflies?” because there was none inside the package. During the course of 2 weeks, she learned a lot about how nature transforms caterpillars to beautiful butterflies. It also taught me about our own transformations in life. Our transformations are not always visible to the naked eye but reflects in the way we behave and interact with our ecosystem. Join me in one of the transformation journeys.

1. Munching On

During the initial days, all we could see were 5 caterpillars in a cup doing 3 things – eating, eating and eating. They were always munching on the brown solid food at the base of the cup. They were growing in size each day (or each hour). As they kept eating and kept growing, a 4 year old had the obvious question “Why are they always eating?”

During the early months of my career, I was not assigned to any customer project but only to internal projects. I was doing 3 main tasks each day – learn, learn and learn. I kept learning about new programming concepts, new programming languages and tried solving new challenges. Some learning was voluntary and some was forced by the organization I was working for. After a while, with no real exposure to an actual customer project, I asked my manager “Why am I always learning but not actively using the learning anywhere?”

The caterpillars were gathering the needs for what is required later in their life. But for someone not aware of the future, the eating and growing in size does not make much sense. Similarly, I did not know why I was learning so much early in my career. But I learnt much later that none of the learning was going waste in the future. All I was doing was preparing for my future career and projects. Every concept I learnt was put to use in some implementation or other.

Sometimes, we put in a lot of effort without really understanding why and our view of the future might be limited. From my experience, I can assure you that any learning you do is going to help in some way or the other in the future.

2. Dormant

After a few days, the now huge caterpillars moved gently to the inside part of the lid and started to hang. They started forming a J shape and became completely dormant. Soon the color and texture changed and they became completely still. At this point, any 4 year old would have the question “What happened? Are the caterpillars dead?”

In our careers, we go through “still” phases which leaves you and others wondering “What is happening?”. During this dormant phase, we may not be visible to the outside world as we curl and form a J. But deep inside, there is a transformation happening. A transformation which utilizes all the energy captured during the earlier active phase.

During this phase, the chrysalides were also relocated from the cup to a more spacious net basket. Even in our lives, we are thrown around to a different location and we struggle to find an immediate purpose behind the actions. We do realize later that it all makes sense.

After a 4 year old realizes that a butterfly is going to emerge out of the chrysalis, the obvious question every morning for the next few days was “Where are the butterflies?”. The answer, again obviously, was that we need to be patient. Blaine Pascal said “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”. It is tough for human beings to be dormant and alone. We crave for attention and the need to be “visible”. The human mind is a wonderful but dangerous thing. The only thing which will take us through this dormant phase is patience and the realization that something beautiful is coming up in the future.

3. Bright and ready to fly

Finally, the butterflies emerged. They were beautiful and colorful. And they had a new skill – they could fly. Looking back at the earlier phases – caterpillar and chrysalis – it is tough to believe the transformation. But the earlier phases were essential to the beauty and skill visible in the current phase. We released the butterflies from our balcony. They were hesitant to leave initially – maybe they were getting used to the oranges slices we were feeding them daily. But ultimately, they took the courage to fly into the beautiful vast world to start a new life on their own.

Often people look at the current success (or lack of it) of a person without knowledge of what the person had to go through in the past. Or people look at the current munching or dormant phase of a person without an idea or vision of the beautiful future. We need to remember to look at a career of a person as a whole without looking at the bits and pieces to get an idea of the bigger picture.

I am not sure what phase you are in your metamorphosis journey. Whatever be the phase, always remember that the key words are learning, patience and courage. They will allow you to fly high.