To Pimp a Butterfly

"How does one become a butterfly?" I remember asking myself this question the last school year,When I saw a blue and black caterpillar, and then the next day I saw a blue and black butterfly. I was so curious to know if that was the same blue and black caterpillar that transformed into strikingly beautiful butterfly. So many thoughts and feelings were rushing in my head like a faucet. I never thought about the trials and tribulations a caterpillar has to go through in order to become a butterfly. I believed from that day on that God had sent me a sign and it was that black and blue caterpillar that was a model of what I hope to become "a pimped out butterfly".

I remember walking out of school and seeing a plethora of stepped on caterpillars on the ground and maybe about 3 soon to be dead caterpillars. Even though I never saw the actual caterpillar's body, I knew a lot of them had died, because all I would see is a disgusting guacamole green color spread on the black concrete. Never would I have ever felt any compassion for a caterpillar, because I truly hated them and anything associated with it, until I started to identify with the little creatures. I remember my 11th grade year and I was sitting outside on esplanade waiting for my ride, with nothing around me but myself and the blue and black caterpillar crawling up the tree, slower then a car on a highway with 4 flat tires. Outside, that day I started to think, how hard it must be to be a caterpillar with all the obstacles they have to go through in order to fly. The beautiful creatures can barely see, their slow, and the only thing they can do for themselves is crawl, so many odds of survival against them but they stick through and become beautiful butterflies.

 

I was so lost in my own train of thought I did not even no my ride had arrived, but in the car I thought about the caterpillar and then myself, and I remember thinking why am I stuck on this caterpillar: that gives you fevers and purple and black rashes. Then I started to think how strong of a mindset the caterpillar had to have in order become that beautiful black and blue butterfly, I witnessed flying a day later. I learned just from seeing that butterfly, fly, that the struggle I am in today is developing the strength I need for tomorrow. It was one of the most amazing moments to witness, because that butterfly did not know it would fly, it was just trying to survive. The caterpillar had to have trusted something greater than itself to guide it through the stages of becoming a beautiful butterfly. Butterflies are truly my role models, they are such beautiful graceful creatures and they do not even know because they can not see their wings. I truly  believe a caterpillar's transformation to a butterfly is to show the brightness of life, and when I feel like I am about to fail, it might actually be that I am about to fly.

As humans we show our appreciation for beautiful things in nature like butterflies, but we rarely like to acknowledge the changes the butterfly had to go through to fly. Butterflies do not just wake up one day and start flying, they have to go through many changes, another word for it is, metamorphosis. And as a hopeful butterfly, I will not settle as being a caterpillar when I have butterfly potential, just like a butterfly I will awake in my own time and be a pimped out butterfly.