A Parable: Butterflies and Caterpillars

There once was an army of caterpillars.  They were different ages, but mostly pretty young.  They lived together in a cluster of shrubs.  They blended in very well in this particular shrub and they were very safe.  Most of them were very content to be in this shrub with their friends.  This shrub provided them protection as well as a great supply of food.

One day something strange started to happen.  That morning when they all woke up they noticed that some of their friends have disappeared.  They also noticed these strange formations where their friends used to live.  This caused quite a stir and they didn’t really know how to react.

“Where’d they all go?”

“Where they taken?”

“Why didn’t they leave a note or tell us where they were going?”

“What are these strange formations?”

The rest of the caterpillars got back to work eating leaves and watching out for predators.  They continued with their day as usual and went to sleep in the same place that they have always slept and at the same time that they have always slept.

The next morning they woke up and realized that more caterpillars have gone missing and more strange formations have popped up where their friends used to be.  They asked the same questions.

“Where’d they all go?”

“Where they taken?”

“Why didn’t they leave a note or tell us where they were going?”

“What are these strange formations?”

The caterpillars questioned it for a while and then they put their heads down to get back to work.  After all they still had to eat and they still had to watch out for predators.  They got back to the work of being a caterpillar.  It was a work that they enjoyed.  It was the only work that they had ever known.  They didn’t know what was outside of their shrub and they had no intention of finding out.  No caterpillar had ever left the shrub and come back.  They worked that day.  Then that night they went to sleep in the same place that they had always slept and went to sleep at the same time that they had always gone to sleep.

The next morning and the next morning and the next morning, they noticed more caterpillars missing and more of these strange formations.  Each morning they asked the same questions.

“Where’d they all go?”

“Where they taken?”

“Why didn’t they leave a note or tell us where they were going?”

“What are these strange formations?”

Each day they would get back to the work of eating and watching out for predators.  They had now gotten pretty used to this life.  In fact, now all the caterpillars had gone.  The only things left in their little shrub was a bunch of strange formations.

The morning came and the caterpillars looked around and saw a bunch of new creatures in their shrub.  They had never seen anything like this.  What were these new creatures?  Were they predators?  What are they planning on doing?  Nobody had told the poor caterpillars that they had all turned into butterflies, and they didn’t have mirrors, so they didn’t know that they had changed too.

Like they had done every morning each caterpillar got back to work eating and watching for predators.  They didn’t give these new creatures much thought until later that afternoon.  You see that afternoon things started to change.  

That afternoon one of these creatures started to move in a funny way.  He started to flap his wings and he was able to move off of the leaves.  He flew out of the shrub.  The rest of the caterpillars saw him leave, but then they got back to the important work of eating and watching out for predators.

Over time more and more of these creatures begin to fly out of the shrub.  They would come back at times, but they spent most of their time away from the shrub.  Well, the rest of the caterpillars got very sick of their constant coming and going.  They finally got used to looking around and seeing all these creatures.  They noticed that even though they all looked the same only some of them were actually caterpillars.  They all had wings and they all had bright beautiful colors.  Half of them were something else and they would fly around and waste their time, but only half of them were real caterpillars.

Well the real caterpillars decided to form themselves into a group.  They committed to never fly out of the safety of the shrub on account of all the predators that are out there.  After all the only thing a caterpillar can do is crawl away very slowly.  That’s not much of a defense.  They decided to band together and collect food.  Why should those other creatures get any of our food?  They don’t even stay here with us watching out for the predators?

Well they didn’t know it, but those caterpillars were really butterflies and they could also fly if they wanted to.  All of the caterpillars had turned into butterflies.  It was the ones who had realized that they were something new that had the freedom to fly and experience what was outside of the little shrub.  The other butterflies wished to remain as caterpillars and lived in fear of predators and lived just to fill their stomachs.