Mother Nature

What We Can Learn from Butterflies

/ Sheri / Leave a comment
Humankind can gleam lessons from its fellow neighbor in the animal kingdom: the butterfly.

Several years ago, I had a vividly haunting dream about butterflies. It affected and inspired me so much so that I went on to write a novel about it. I’m more than halfway through writing it, so stay tuned for that book’s availability down the literary road!

For months prior to writing the book, I researched anything and everything I could get my hands on about these mysterious cold-blooded, near-sighted insects. One of the most fascinating aspects of them is their ability to morph from egg to caterpillar to pupa to butterfly.

But are we any different than the butterfly?

I think about the famous sphinx riddle:

What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening?

The answer is humankind: we are a baby or toddler in the morning of our life; in the prime or afternoon of our life, we walk upright on two legs, and in the evening of our life, we often need assistance (i.e. a cane) to help us remain ambulatory.

Regardless of how we got here, we are in a worldwide pandemic. We are in the pupa stage of a butterfly life cycle as a human race. 

So, what IS the pupa stage?

It’s a resting stage, “where the animal does not eat or move, although great changes occur….Once all the necessary changes have taken place and environmental conditions are favorable, the butterfly is ready to emerge.” (Source: Do Butterflies Bite? by Hazel Davies and Carol A. Butler).

The pandemic has created a forced pause button on the world; we are currently not much different than the butterfly in its pupa stage. Even the amazing doctors, nurses, janitors, Amazon workers, deliverymen and women, supermarket employees—the list goes on and on—even they are forced to alter their way of doing things. We are all, like the mysterious insect who must morph.

There is no one on the planet that is unaffected by COVID-19. Mother Nature is giving us a no opt-out option. I encourage all of us to accept, like the butterfly in its pupa stage, the new reality we find ourselves in and take a moment to pause and reflect. It is when we reflect that real growth begins.

The TV of the Mind

/ Sheri / 2 Comments
Who is running the show of your life? It need not be your mind.

On a recent trip to New Jersey, the flight was delayed significantly. We departed on time, but our plane hovered for a couple of hours over Virginia, waiting for the storm over Newark to pass. 

One of the passengers beside me, a man from Florida sighed loudly. “I’ve been up since 4 in the morning. I am exhausted.” It was the third time he announced this since our plane first took off. Now there was an edge to his voice.

The pilot announced we were now flying into Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to refuel and “wait for further instructions.”

“Man, I’m hungry. And tired. I’ve been going since 4 this morning.”

The woman between us nodded her head. “Oh, wow.”

“Yeah, I’m in construction. I need to help with the remodeling from Ida in New Jersey.”

“Oh, what kind of construction do you do?” the woman asked.

An hour later, the pilot announced that we would be idling on the plane “just a bit longer.”

If the man and woman’s dialogue could be heard as music, the man’s words sounded painful, whiny, out of tune; the woman’s speech was soothing and buoyant. 

Hours passed. I listened to the growing tense “music” of the passengers around me: some were downright heartbreaking (a baby’s cries) while others were pleasant (a couple’s laughter).

The music shifted between the man and woman beside me: the man’s complaints morphed into humor (“Mother Nature’s gotta’ do what she does”) and then finally curiosity.

“Where are you heading?” he asked.

“Bombay.”

“Oh wow, did you miss your flight?”

“Yes, I think so.” Despite her mask, I could feel her smiling.

“What will you do?”

“I will get the next one.”

“Man, how long is that flight?”

“Sixteen-hours.”

“That’s crazy.”

“It is nice. I enjoy it.”

The normally 3.5-hour trip lasted 10 hours before we landed in Newark. By the time we deplaned, the “I’ve-been-up-since-‘4am” man was jovial; the woman from Bombay, appearing as content as she was from the start of our journey.

I wondered: what makes people experience the same event so differently? It was also not lost on me that the woman bound for Bombay influenced—for the better—our Floridian companion.

If we think of the mind as a TV, we can objectify the mind. We can watch the thoughts, but we don’t need to act on those thoughts. We can observe the facts as the peaceful woman on our plane did:

The plane is delayed.

We do not know where or when the plane will land.

We can choose to be aware of the facts of a situation—however unpleasant if not downright painful at times, without reacting to them.

In Martha Beck’s book, The Way of Integrity, the life coach writes candidly about her past struggles with anxiety. Her way out was through: through observing without judgment, through allowing without reacting:

“Clearly, my thoughts caused suffering. So, I didn’t obey them. Instead, I watched and questioned them until they dissolved.”

We possess this ability. We can choose to react or to grow still. We are not our mind, and our mind is not in control. We are the observer of the mind, the observer of life.

When we watch a dramatic movie, we can lose ourselves in the scenes and characters. We can literally forget that we are watching a movie, so drawn in we can become to the setting and actions of the story on the screen. But at any moment, we can become aware that we are merely the observer of the action on the colorful monitor.

When life feels unpleasant or downright painful, we can grow still and observe. We can watch without becoming the negativity or suffering.