(Photo by Laura Herbert)
The caterpillar works and works, slowly crawling from leaf to leaf, endlessly chewing and digesting, getting heavier. This same creature also is a butterfly, flitting from flower to flower, sometimes sipping nectar. It’s helpful to remember that they are one and the same, isn’t it?
This creature has two approaches to living the same life. So do you and I. Seeing people play on the traveling rings helped me shift out of caterpillar mode. Those people look like butterflies! The people lifting stacks of weight in the gym look like caterpillars. I have an inner pull that draws me to the butterfly approach. Yet I can be swayed by other’s opinions of how it should it be…and even more insidious my inner critic that has a very strong opinion of ‘the way it’s done’.
The caterpillar vs. the butterfly approach can usually be most obviously seen for me while exercising. But it’s everywhere – music, work, relationships, tending my home, you name it, it’s there. Each small movement toward play in any of these areas can help the possibility of play in the other areas.
So, I’ll start with exercising, start with music and see where it spreads.
You and I both have our day – much of what is to be done is pre-decided, especially the work part. But how we do what we do is always up to us. It can be the caterpillar way or the butterfly way. Which is your way today?
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I took this photo at the Dunedin museum, they have a butterfly house. The Peleides Blue Morpho (Morpho peleides) is an iridescent tropical butterfly found in Mexico, Central America, northern South America, Paraguay, and Trinidad.The brilliant blue color in the butterfly’s wings is caused by the diffraction of the light from millions of tiny scales on its wings. It uses this to frighten away predators, by flashing its wings rapidly. The wingspan of the Blue Morpho butterfly ranges from 7.5–20 cm (3.0–7.9 in). The entire Blue Morpho Butterfly lifecycle, from egg to adult is only 115 days.The Blue Morpho Butterfly drinks the juices from rotting fruits for food. Its favourites are mango, kiwi, and lychee. Blue Morpho butterflies live in the rainforests of South America, and can be found in Mexico and Central America.The larvae of Blue Morpho Butterflies are cannibals. The caterpillar Blue Morpho Butterfly is red-brown with patches of bright green.The Blue Morpho Butterflies stick together in groups to deter their predators, a form of mobbing behavior.