Can My Life Really Change, or Why the Caterpillar Has to Die

The most common question people ask me is the one they never ask at all. But it is always right underneath the surface. I see it in the young man in a counseling session in my office nervously tapping his hands admitting what he knows is true about the life he wants. I see it in the woman lingering after the funeral, because she knows she will have to go home to an empty house for the first time in 40 years. It’s what a newcomer is asking to herself silently sitting in the back of the class I'm teaching.

I am in the life-change business. As a minister, why else would anyone take part in any of the work I do? All of us desire something. More love, less anger, the promise of happiness or companionship. We know we want it. And my work has taught me that most of us secretly worry we won’t be able to find it.

It’s the most common question anyone ever asks me, and they never say it out loud. It’s an understandable question. It just isn’t the right one. The question isn’t whether our lives can change, but how they will. Nothing in the world is static. Living a new life we desire often means knowing what in us can disappear so a new person can live.

The caterpillar has to die

A few months ago, my kids got a kit in the mail to grow butterflies out of caterpillars. A nondescript box arrived, looking much like the host of Amazon boxes carrying daily supplies that have become so much a part of our lives. This one had something different inside. Small containers held caterpillars. My boys named each one of them, and checked in on them every day, giving them bits of food and water. The caterpillars crawled onto tiny ridges or columns of a fake branch, surrounded themselves with a chrysalis, and the waiting began. Every day the kids would check. Finally, the chrysalis of each would shake and move, until the butterflies emerged. My children gleefully released each one of them, cheering them on by name.

One of them didn’t fly away, though. It couldn’t. This butterfly had a part of its body that still looked just like the chrysalis. It had a wing that hadn't opened, that hadn't turned from chrysalis to butterfly. It was like part of it was still holding on to being a caterpillar. And so as the others flew away, my children tenderly placed this one on a plant nearby hoping that it would survive. It wouldn’t let go, and so it couldn’t move forward.

Butterflies can be a happy-clappy symbol of transformation. Their transformation is not bright and shiny. It is gruesome. New studies have been able to see what is actually happening inside the chrysalis, and it is bloody and wild. Inside that seemingly rigid container, all of the caterpillar’s internal organs melt. It becomes a living soup, completely unrecognizable from the creature it was, except for a few tiny cells that some scientists refer to as “imaginal cells.”

While everything else is destroyed, while everything else is unrecognizable from its past self, there are a few tiny and powerful cells that remember what it is and what it is supposed to become. They turn on just the right DNA sequences, activate the right process, and take the absolute destruction of the caterpillar and resurrect it into a butterfly. None of this happens unless the caterpillar completely goes away. The caterpillar has to die.

The seemingly saccharine image of transformation we see on children’s show and greeting cards requires the destruction of the self and imaginal cells. Can my life really change? Yes, but we need cells of integrity in us that know who we are supposed to become and a willingness to let almost everything else die.

Stretched and Cut

Rather than some wild transformation led by a voice of integrity inside us, it's so tempting to stretch or cut off who we are to meet the expectations of the world. In ancient Greek mythology, there is a character, Procrustes. He had a home people would stay in while on a sacred journey between two important towns. While they slept in his bed, Procrustes would take the traveler in the middle of the night and stretch them to fit the exact proportions of the bed, or cut off their arms or legs that hung over the edge. You had to fit just right, or you got stretched and butchered to fit the box.

Don’t we do this to ourselves all the time? Become the person that our culture, family, job, or TV tell us to become instead of what our imaginal cells know is in store for us? How often do we stretch ourselves or cut off something real about who we are to fit the world? Far from changing and transforming, we cut off what doesn’t fit, so we can remain static.

Often, it’s precisely what we love or what people praise us for that creates our limits for us. People have told you that you are great at a certain thing all your life. It feels wonderful, and it becomes incredibly easy to make that a bed that you’ll stretch yourself or cut off a limb to stay in so they keep saying you’re wonderful. You get praised for being easy-going for 30 years, and it makes you never want to speak up.

It can often be the very people and places you love that constrict your imagination the most. The friends you have, the job you have, the place you live or the relationship you have can all constrict what is possible in our lives if they become a bed to fit into no matter what. It is hardly ever enemies or strangers who have strong vocal opinions about who we are supposed to be for them. You get to decide whether you are willing to let go of the life you have in order to have a new one, or whether you’ll stretch and cut yourself off to fit a bed others have made.

Change is everywhere, why not in you?

Transformation is how the universe works. Ancient religious stories tell us this all the time. It shows up in the teacher Jesus with upside down cultural wisdom talking about the need to die to be born anew. The Buddha had to leave the life of a prince and meet sickness and old age firsthand to become enlightened. Stars die and become the matter of every single thing you’ve ever known. The dying leaves of one season become the nourishing soil of the next. Matter and energy are recycled over and over again. Nothing in this world is truly stagnant. Why would you be the only exception? Why would your life be the only static thing?

How can you cooperate with that change?

Pay attention to what people praise you for and how you respond​

Are you making a small bed to lie in? Being great at something is wonderful. Having a strong community, or a sense of place that defines you can be grounding and comforting. But pay attention to whether those things are making you more awake or asking you to cut off who you are to fit in with that life.

Know your “imaginal cells,” and be willing to let everything else die.

It might seem like being willing to let almost everything in your life die and holding onto integrity are at odds with one another. They aren’t. They make each other possible. The tiny cells of that caterpillar remember what it is supposed to be while everything else about it is being destroyed in that gruesome soup. They call it forward. That is your integrity. It is what rests deep inside you and knows your real name better than anything. It is what you know is more real than anything else about you. That integrity will help you let go of what needs to die so you can move ahead in life.

Surround yourself with environments and people who activate your imaginal cells

There are people who will greet you with open arms and love when you arrive whole at the next chapter of your life. They will celebrate you and say “you’ve changed” like it’s a good thing. There are friends and communities and workplaces that won’t be afraid of you transforming before their eyes. Surround yourself with them, and you will never be alone. No matter who you are, there are more surprises left for your life.

Can your life really change? It will, no matter what you do. What lives? What dies? What’s next? That depends on you.