Isn’t that a beautiful word?

Chrysalis.

I’ve always loved the celestial feeling that seeing or saying the word evokes.

It seems similar to the word crystal, which evokes, pure, shimmering, magnificent rock imagery that unfolds in my minds eye as the word graces my ocular or auditory senses.  Yet the word evolves from a Greek word meaning gold, resultant of observing the coating or coloring of pupae of various species.

The beauty also arises from its use for a transitory state, as in the emergence into a adulthood by that of a teenager from a chrysalis state. It signifies a drastic change in a being, the chrysalis being the semi-dormant, and luminescent state a creature occupies before being transformed into something enhanced, or evolved.

Consider the common caterpillar.

Surely it does not believe in metamorphosis. Nor is it aware of its impending recreation.  Ignorantly it creeps and crawls amongst its food source, sustaining its body and navigating it’s journey languidly, leaf to leaf.  It wanders, and searches, and sustains, and pursues self-interestedly the word it is born unto, until the weariness sets in.  It can’t go on any longer self-serving, the prolonged gluttony will not be sated.  The inch-by-inch retch through existence can no longer be tolerated.

So it compartmentalizes, and shields itself of the outside world.

The chrysalis.

And it waits, dormantly, for itself, or the world, to change.

Upon it emergence, it finds itself incredible.

There is another creature, conducting itself in similar fashion, who goes through an odd metamorphosis.

The snake.

It goes through the same ritual, creeping, searching, slithering and yearning for sustenance and shelter.  Its struggle is no more severe than that of the caterpillar.  Its challenges have no more gravity that the ignorant insect, nor its burdens more severe. But when it comes time to morph, however, it manages to only shed a dead epidermis and become a larger, more ferocious version of its prior self.

But it’s still the same. It is still the same calm, prepared, and calculating deadly creature. When it sheds its skin, when it attempts to evolve and transcend, it merely becomes a larger, more dangerous version of its prior self.  Does it feel more comfortable as this unyielding, ferocious being?

Is it simply incapable of shedding its true nature?

Can you will yourself into a chrysalis and hibernate to transformation?

Or may you slither on, propelled and compelled by an unyielding perseverance?

Which do you most relate to ?

J