Butterflies are such beautiful and delicate creatures that most of us have taken the time to enjoy their movement, colors and mannerisms. Their wings are massive compared to their bodies and don’t even need to be so big for them to fly. They can actually fly with a damaged or broken wing.
They don’t flap their wings either, like birds do. You know – up and down. Butterflies create a figure 8 pattern motion with their wings by constricting their bodies thus moving their wings and propelling them through the air.
Their large wings act like a rudder. The larger the rudder, the faster you can turn a ship. With butterflies, their large wings enable them to turn faster and thereby not become someone’s dinner.
But that’s not all, let’s not forget how butterflies start out… as catepillars, then cocoon, then butterfly!
As that caterpillar is in confinement in his cocoon, the time grows near for his emergence. But that will never happen without a struggle, without pain, without a difficult fight. Without that struggle his transformation is incomplete.
As he pushes through the small hole, his swollen body and small, shriveled wings rub and rub and rub on the cocoon, until his struggle is successful and he emerges, nearly at the point of exhaustion. His body has been resized and is no longer swollen and his wings are dried, strengthened and he is NOW ready to fly.
Without the struggle, he will never grow or fly! This whole process, by the way, takes 5-21 days. Hmmmm.
This struggle that we now face, is not unlike the butterfly’s story.
We have allowed ourselves to become “swollen”, filled with excesses, and accumulation of things. Our ability to spread our huge wings and fly over it all has not been sufficiently developed, partially because the difficulties and frictions of life have been few and manageable.
” As with the butterfly, adversity is necessary to build character in people.”
” Storms make trees take deeper roots.”
” All flowers grow through dirt.”
In this time of “struggle”/confinement – let’s embrace the rubbing, reduce the excess, enjoy the process, persevere, and emerge with gigantic wings to fly above all that is earthbound.
Resist the urge to flap up and down at the same old pattern of your life. Let your wings develop a new pattern of flight and find their strength in practicing this new way, while still in your seclusion. For soon, you will be free to fly and turn quickly in your new found life.
Who knows what “Butterfly Effect” you are destined to cause?
Cheers to you.
Under Debra’s Palm 
Nice metaphor – I like Butterflies – they’re “light and airy”. They sometime remind me of people who can be somewhat “flighty” flittering from here to there aimlessly and going no where. Perhaps being snatched out of the air by a passing bird looking for an inflight snack. Or, landing on a fragrant flower only to be snatched up by a spider that has been lurking in the pedals waiting for a meal to stop by. Maybe caught by some child who enjoys pulling the wings off. There was safety back in that cocoon where he could have stayed and perhaps died in the cocoon peacefully. But, he chose to see the world and enjoy the time he had on this earth regardless of the risk. What kind of a Butterfly would you be? One that always plays it safe or one that’s willing to take a chance to see the world?
You are an amazing writer, Dennis Andrew. Thank you.