Patience is a Virtue: How the Caterpillar Becomes a Butterfly

About a year ago while driving, I listened to an NPR science program about the newest scientific understanding of how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. I was also reminded at a spiritual event last weekend about a well-known parable of ‘the Emperor Moth’ which focuses on how important it is to not force a butterfly or moth to emerge too early from its cocoon.

Scientists have found that when a caterpillar enters into its pupae stage inside a chrysalis, it appears to completely dissolve! If you open the cocoon at that point there is no structure there, no organs, just a gooey substance. Then out of this primordial ooze a butterfly takes form, an entirely distinct, new creature altogether! This staggers my understanding as a waking dream story, a metaphor for my own or others’ deepest life transformations.

What this metaphor of the chrysalis says to me is that I have to be patient with myself, and with others, to allow a complete transformation process to reshape the conditions allowing positive growth and birth or rebirth to transpire naturally. You cannot rush change without impinging upon the fullest realization of the change potentials.

I have had ample opportunities lately to find or practice patience. As a new homeowner, it seems like every time I turn around another emergency pops up! The nice new washing machine I was grateful to have stopped mid cycle during a power outage and now does not spin or drain. The marvelous sliding door to my pretty little deck has been letting the rain in onto the beautiful wood flooring in  the living room! I have slathered on sealer but still yesterday more water splattered in with the rain. And my dear Sophie had a bee sting during a walk that she was terribly allergic to, developing dangerous hive blisters all over her body during the 24-minute trip to the vet for a shot of antihistamines.

But, you know? The washing machine snafu has led me to purchase a good home warranty policy. Even though that takes a month to kick in so I am going to a laundromat for awhile, there is a laundromat not too far away and the dryer still works, and the warranty could save me a bundle and get me through plenty more glitches down the road. I have a professional handyman fixing the door as I write, and that should be a good job for not too much expense. And Sophie is okay after her emergency, so now I am more vigilant on her walks and keep her away from tall grasses.

images are from pixabay.com

There is a deeper lesson I am gaining from all of these events (and some others not mentioned here), about detachment and the importance of maintaining a higher perspective. I choose not to be stuck in my head or let daily annoyances or needs hold me down in a negative state of worry.

I have been watching alot of NOVA programs about Space this month, plus contemplating daily, and I find that focusing on Mars or Jupiter or the Cosmos helps to lift my attention out of the immediacy of practical concerns. My favorite film, Contact, has been showing this month too and I have watched it again twice. Talk about patience! In Contact, Eleanor Arroway (played brilliantly by Jodie Foster) is a SETI scientist who spends hours and days and months and years sorting through one distant region of the galaxy after another in a seemingly futile search for intelligent extraterrestrial life.  After Eleanor does actually make contact, this launches her on the journey of many lifetimes where she is shown a depth of reality no other earthling has physically encountered. Even so, like in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, very few believe her when she tries to communicate about what she has seen. So, she returns to her life of patient observations.

“Small steps” is the message of Carl Sagan’s Contact. I am finding that principle applies to my life, daily!

I welcome YOUR Story and Comments!

 

 

 

Baby Boomers—A Better Endings Tale of Work and Love (You Can Change It Up!)

We are multidimensional Beings: multi-faceted, multi-faced. This is the essence of our composite archetypal identities based on the various roles we occupy in our lives. Our Life Themes—recurring KINDS of situations that form threads weaving a colorful tapestry through the Life Chapters of our Life Stories—lead us to develop an assembly or ‘ensemble cast’ of archetypal sub-identities based on our positive role models or from avoiding behaviors of our nemeses.

Work is a Life Theme that often brings routine or habits as well as financial security and productivity into our lives. At its best, our Work supports our vocations; then we love what we do for a living! But sometimes Work can become onerous, over-routinizing or bringing out our ‘worst’ rather than our best qualities, to the degree it may lead us to feel somewhat numb in our social life or personal relations.

As a 1950’s child myself, I can appreciate the ‘better endings’ tale of the 1987 movie Baby Boomers with Diane Keaton. J.C. Wiatt (Keaton) is a woman executive for a marketing agency in the City. When a distant cousin dies, she is asked to raise her cousin’s six-month-old baby. After accepting this new role as a parent, J.C. at first tries to maintain her high-paced, cutthroat sort of career, but eventually she comes to realize how this career is sapping her full identity.

After losing her husband because of her choice to raise the child and being offered a lower position to accommodate her changing persona at work, J. C. chooses to quit and moves with her foster daughter to a farmhouse in Vermont. Here she gradually allows her heart to re-open, to her daughter, new friends in the small rural community, and eventually to a handyman (played by Sam Shepard).  Meanwhile she develops a homemade baby applesauce recipe that eventually promises to be a million dollar business. When she is offered the opportunity to sell that to a major food chain and move back to the City to manage the business, she opts out, preferring to stay in Vermont with her child and new partner.

images are from pixabay.com

Life moves us forward, so long as we let it! Two days ago on my way to my own ‘retirement lunch’ (yep!), I read a bumper sticker I have been contemplating ever since:

Life Is Life!

Life is rich in opportunities for new experience, for learning to develop your talents and interests, for making choices at every turn as you compose your unique Life Story!

I welcome YOUR Comments and Story!

 

ART to the RESCUE: A Popular Better Ending Theme

One of my favorite all-time movies is the original “An Affair to Remember” with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant. Of course it is a highly romantic tale of star-crossed lovers who find each other on an ocean cruise while both are otherwise engaged with the ‘wrong’ people back on land.  What interests me this month as we are exploring the ARTIST archetype is how in “An Affair to Remember,” it is the ARTIST to the rescue, to save the day and make sure not only that these two destined lovers marry, but more importantly, that each is able to manifest their fullest potentials.(Click to see scenes at  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050105/ )

Nikkie Ferrante, global playboy about to marry for money to perpetuate his high living lifestyle, is in reality a frustrated Dreamer, an Artist.  Meeting Terry McKay, who teaches voice in New York City to children, brings Nikkie face to face and heart to heart with his true inner calling, not just to marry Miss McKay but to return to his Art at any cost in order to support a family on his own. When these two promise to meet after six months at the top of the Empire State building to forego their prior engagements and declare their love for each other so they may marry, Nikkie gives up his aim to ‘marry into money’ and live off his wife’s inheritance and he vows instead to be an ARTIST, destitute if need be, even alone if that must be what occurs after the six month hiatus.

It is also quite literally Art to the rescue in the pivotal scene at the end, when Nikkie visits Terry to bring a gift of a shawl from his deceased Aunt after he and Terry have become estranged. He had been there at the Empire State building and believed that Terry was not, although the audience is quite aware Terry was hit by a car and crippled on her way to their meeting place:

“I was looking up; it was the nearest thing to Heaven. You were there!”

Terry visits Nikkie at her apartment where she remains seated on her couch; it is only when Nikkie enters her bedroom and sees his own painting of Terry wearing his Aunt’s shawl (which he was told had been purchaesd by a lady in a wheelchair), that he understands. Terry also wanted her independence and to be true to herself; she needed to be able to walk before she would have sought out Nikkie on her own.

The song Terry coaches children to sing in the movie is about listening to one’s “conscience;” again, to be true to one’s innermost callings rather than taking the easy, obvious pathway in life.  Many people defray or submerge their own ARTIST’s WAY; that is, they may not listen to what their unconscious, archetypal ARTIST part of Self is trying to express, either to the world or to their own conscious sensibilities.

images are from pixabay.com

Express your own Inner ARTIST’s Nature! What would it have you do today? In an important situation? Heed the Call!

I welcome your Comments and Stories!

Live Your Dream, Now! With Better Movie Endings

So have you made your list of movies which endings you would change?  If not, please take a few minutes to participate. Write a list of films you love, except for their endings. Make a note of what you don’t like about the ending and how you would re-vision the ending so it would be more satisfying to you.

Now then, look over your list.  What do these choices of films that  don’t end well by your standards reveal about YOU and specifically about how you view ‘better endings’?

When I review my own list (see the Daily Post for Wednesday, Nov. 27), I see a very clear pattern. I don’t like it when a main character “settles for less”.  I want the protagonist to reach for and achieve their highest human and spiritual potential.  Which is true, of course, for myself as well; I’m always striving to reach the next vista, take the next step in the direction of fulfilling my sense of purpose and adventure.

So ask yourself, what does your list reveal about the sort of Better Endings you seek in your own life? You are welcome to Comment on your insights. And there is still time (deadline Saturday night) to submit your Better Movie Ending story for Story of the Week.

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Movies I Love, Except for Their Endings!

Movies I Love, Except for Their Endings!.