“You must want to fly so much that you’re willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

~A.A. Milne, (1882-1956) British playwright who was most successful with his children’s books about the teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh.

I’m a huge fan of writer and visual artist, Austin Kleon, (1983- ), American author of Steal Like an Artist, and I’ve purchased and read every one of his helpful and entertaining books. You should, too! (Additionally, I receive his newsletters, and greatly encourage you to also receive them by subscribing from his website, austinkleon.com).
In his June 2, 2020 newsletter, he shared,

“Who are you?”, asks the caterpillar (in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865 by English author, Lewis Carroll, ala Charles Dodgson)

Alice is changing and she is confused. She looks for sympathy from the Caterpillar. ”When you have to turn into a chrysalis -you will, someday, you know- and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”

“Not a bit,” says the Caterpillar.

Kleon continues, “I keep thinking about Sam Anderson’s (1947-) —American, staff writer New York Times, author of the 2017 book on Oklahoma City, Boom Town— piece about what caterpillars actually go through inside their cocoon”:

‘Terrible things happen in there: a campaign of grisly desolation that would put most horror movies to shame. What a caterpillar is doing, in its self-imposed quarantine, is basically digesting itself. It is using enzymes to reduce its body to goo, turning itself into a soup of ex-caterpillar – a nearly formless sludge oozing around a couple essential organs (tracheal tubes, gut).

“Only when this near-total, self-annihilation can the new growth begin. Inside that gruesome mush are special clusters of cells calked ’imaginal discs’, which sounds like something from a Disney movie but which I have been assured is actual biology. Imaginal discs are basically the seeds of crucial butterfly structures: eyes, wings, genitalia, and so on. These parts gorge themselves on the protein of the deconstructed caterpillar, growing exponentially, taking form, becoming real That’s how you get a butterfly: out of the horrid meltdown of a modest caterpillar.”

Kleon then asks, ”What will we look like when we emerge from our meltdowns? Im trying to remember: Beautiful things grow out of shit.”

I want to leave you with an extra good feeling when you think about butterflies. Again, A.A. Milne’s sweet characters, Pooh and Piglet, present a sweet consideration:

“How does one become a butterfly?” Pooh asked pensively.

“You must want to fly so much that you’re willing to give up being a caterpillar,” Piglet replied.

“You mean, to die?” asked Pooh.

“Yes and no”, he answered. ”What LOOKS like you, will die, but what’s REALLY you, will live on.”