Caterpillars and butterflies
“I shall have to put up with a few caterpillars if I want to see butterflies. I understand they are very beautiful”.
The Little Price by Antoine de St Exupery
I have been blogging for a few months now enjoying sharing my exploration of the unknown bits of my future as much as I can explore the unknown.
I realised I couldn’t give up altogether my need to know what will happen next; living in the here and now, is a noble idea, but in my world it feels like a struggle to pracise all the time. Trying to work out the future gives me comfort and a sense of security and continuity. It’s fun, I can fantasise, imagine and dream my future and what I want to achieve and pursue it. I can retell my story again and again and open up new possibilities. Why give up such amazing creativity?
Someone who plays a very influential role in my life describes it as drawing the road ahead rather than letting it unfold. And in a way this is reality, the road ahead can unfold in ways which can be hard to accept.
My argument against not drawing the road ahead is that it leaves me directionless. What about my goals?
I was told I needed to find a golden path.
Noble, but it doesn’t work for me. What is a golden path anyway?
What I did find was that I made a lot of mistakes – many of my caterpillars didn’t turn into butterflies, and that I could do two things with them. One had backward implication i.e. feel bad about my choice and myself. The other had forward implication i.e. what do I do with it now? The second option requires optimism.
There are a few definitions to optimism, the one I prefer is that it’s not all good out there – life can definitely be harsh – but that I trust myself that will know how to handle whatever happens. And if I don’t, I can ask for help.
So I plan, I love planning and I consider a few outcomes: everything will turn out as I want it to; only some things will turn out the way I want them and nothing will turn out as I planned. When I do this, I can look the bad possibilities in the face and check what my fears are and how I can deal with them. This is not to say that everything becomes predictable, but it helps to recognise what psychologists call the locus of control: in me or outside me and what do I do about it, in other words resilience.
It definitely requires me to be an active participant in my life, responsible for all my choices. Aren’t we responsible for the caterpillars in our lives anyway, whether they turn into butterflies or not?
What’s always fun is practicing the law of attraction when you feel unstable in your path. Believe in a certain outcome as if it is the only possiblity. Otherwise, believe also that when that certain outcome did not turn out at all the positive way, it’s working its way up to become positive over time. I’m not trying to be cheesy, but things just seem to stem out that way.