Frank Duprée

Metamorphosis

Something is Missing

A Short story                The Cocoon                Chapter one

It was noontime. My workload was unbelievable. Calls to return, reports to read and reports to write. How would I ever get through it all? I was dazed. I should have walked out, taken my lunch break, and come right back to the office, but I didn’t. I picked up my jacket and walked, or should I say I drifted, out the door. I wandered down the street past the vendors and the lunchtime crowds. I was walking in the park. What streets did I take? I don’t know. But there I was, a lost soul, wandering around. I can’t remember ever feeling so numb to the world.

I will never forget that day.  It is etched into my memory.  How did I ever become what I was then?  I was unfulfilled, overweight, and tired of the rat race.  I was married to the girl of my dreams and had two children whom I loved to pieces.  But lately even my home life was not what it should have been.  We weren't talking much;  I was even out of touch with my kids.  For awhile I had buried myself in sports, but it didn't take long before the thrill was gone, and I just stopped playing. I had always thought that if I worked hard and did the best I could I would succeed in life. It seemed that success was eluding me.  I just seemed to be on a treadmill, going nowhere.  The bills were piling up higher and higher.  My ambition and drive were getting lower and lower.

As I was walking along, a line from an old song kept playing in my head: "been dazed and confused for so long it's not true."  That's how I felt, dazed and confused.  The next thing I knew I was in the park. I know there were children all about, but I wasn’t paying any attention to their games and noise they made. There were people reading books, some folks playing checkers, and a dog fetching a stick.  They looked like they were having such a good time, but it just made me feel worse.

I wandered over to the lake and walked beside the water.  That's when I saw it.  What was it?  Something was hanging on a branch, just over the water edge.  It was a chrysalis.  I don't know how long I stood there looking at it but it didn't matter.  For some reason it made me feel good.  I think I was identifying with it.  I felt like I was shut up in some kind of cocoon.  I was suffocating inside.  I felt like I was dying.

That's when something happened that I never expected.  I had never seen it happen before.  I saw the cocoon start to move.  Whatever was inside was trying to get out.  Boy, did I identify with that!  I had to get out of my cocoon too.  My sense of dying started to change.  A feeling of excitement started to fill me up all over.  It was electrifying.  My sense of suffocation was replaced with an increased zest for life.  Every time that butterfly pushed against that cocoon I pushed against mine.  Time was standing still.  Was it an hour or the whole afternoon? I don't know.  But I do know what happened next.

That butterfly was struggling so hard all by itself.  Just like me.  I decided to help it out.  I got out my pocket knife, opened it and carefully cut a tiny slit the cocoon.  In just a few minutes the butterfly was making its way out.  I felt great!  That's what I needed.  Someone to help me.  I needed a break.  I was working so hard trying to be the best that I could be, but it wasn't working.  I guess that's why I felt so close to that butterfly.  I even imagined that its smiled at me as it worked itself out of the cocoon.  As I looked at it glistening in the sunlight, I felt good.

There it was hanging upside down and flapping its wings.  I wondered how long it would be before it flew away, soaring up into the sky.  Those few minutes watching that butterfly were some of the most exciting minutes I had ever spent.  But it didn't fly away.  It stopped flapping its wings.  After a moment or two it started to flap to them again.  But it didn't flap them as hard this time.  It soon stopped, and then after a moment it started flapping them again; but this time it was for an even shorter time.  Then it just hung there, and then it dropped into the lake and drowned.

It just floated away, and as it did all my emotions floated away too.  I felt like I died along with that butterfly.  What happened?  Although the sun was shining brightly a dark cloud seemed to cover my head.  Was that what was going to happen to me?  Was I going to hang on just a little while longer and then drop and die?  I walked away feeling sad.  I had felt bad when I walked into the park, and now I felt totally depressed.  I just wandered around.

Something happened as I was walking.  I seemed to go back to elementary school and I was just a boy again.  There I was in science class and my teacher was holding a stick with a chrysalis on it.  It was as clear in my mind as if I was there again.  She started to tell us about the change that a caterpillar goes through in its chrysalis.  I can see her standing there right now and I hear her voice again.  "When the time comes for the caterpillar to change into a butterfly it spins a cocoon around itself.  Once the cocoon is finished the change starts to take place.  Everything about the caterpillar becomes different.  What will emerge later on after a great struggle is not a caterpillar with wings but a new creature!  It is a butterfly!"

I saw it.  I heard it.  I remembered everything.  Why didn't it work?  I replayed it in my mind over again.  I must have forgotten something.  Then it struck me.  "After a great struggle."  That was it!  I thought that butterfly needed help, but it didn't.  It had everything it needed.  God had given it everything it needed already.  To make that change from caterpillar to butterfly was easy.  It wasn't hard to spin the cocoon.  And once inside the change took place all by itself.  The hard part was getting out of the cocoon.  That was where the struggle was.  No!  That was where the "great struggle" was!  That butterfly didn't really need a break.  I didn't help it at all.  I killed it.

Boy did I feel bad!  But the depression was somehow gone.  It seemed to float away.  Something was happening inside of me. Somehow I didn't feel that the butterfly's life was wasted.  I felt as if it had fulfilled its destiny.  I know now that that butterfly taught me the most important lesson I had ever learned in my entire life.  God had put in me everything I needed for my life to change.  That was the day I decided that I was going to go through my own "great struggle" and break out of the cocoon I had formed around myself.

I started walking out of the park.  I remember thinking to myself that I didn't need a break after all.  I made up my mind that I wasn't going to stay in my cocoon any longer.  I was going to make that butterfly the symbol of my life.  When I tried to help that butterfly out of its cocoon, I took away from it the one thing it needed to be able to fly.  It needed that "great struggle" in order to build the strength to fly.  Whatever struggles I would face from that day on, I would face them knowing that God had put inside of me the ability to go through whatever was necessary.  I was going to work through my problems.  Every single one of them!  I was going to get my career back on track.  In fact, I was going to make the changes necessary to go forward and achieve some of those things that I had put off because I thought they were unattainable. I was going to work through my family problems.  I decided right there and then that I was going to start to communicate with my wife and children and have that happy family I always wanted.  And last of all I was going to go through whatever struggles I faced in order to change myself. I felt that something was happening deep in my soul. Somehow there was a kind of metamorphosis going on. The mere fact that I realized my struggles were necessary seemed to get the process going. I wasn't going to go through life looking for a break anymore. I wasn't going to be like a caterpillar going through life with my head hanging down every day.  I was going to be metamorphosised: transformed into a butterfly and soar through life.  I was going to fulfill my destiny.

That was the day I stopped feeling sorry for myself and hoping someone would give me a break. I found out what my soul knew all long.  I realized that God has placed in us, every one of us, the ability and then the opportunity to have a metamorphosis. Mine had just begun.