I spent this weekend in Chattanooga with my family: a mother and a father and a brother and a sister and two cousins, including one from my faraway Poland homeland, and a nearly 2-year-old niece whose smile and eyes twinkle more deeply each time I see her.
We ventured to the aquarium for the morning, a beautiful building on the Tennessee River, crowned with two distinct glass towers. We walked around for a couple hours and saw fish and stingrays and sharks. Also turtles. Lots and lots of turtles. Some big, others palm-sized, all of them evoking awe and a pointed finger from my entranced niece.
We also saw butterflies.
Yes, butterflies. At an aquarium. Atop one of the glass towers. Gigantic, colorful butterflies fluttering for branches or lily pads or alighting on human arms and hands.
I wondered what they were doing here. Why this could be called an “aquarium” if butterflies also had a mailing address to this place. Also included here were crocodiles and penguins, though somehow these felt more within bounds of “aquarium.”
A butterfly section just felt so random. Felt so unexpected and delightful and confusing.
Felt so appropriate for my life. For this crossroads of a chapter I find myself writing and living, pages turning and stuck all at once.
Wandering and yet homeward.
Set loose and yet shackled.
In and not of this world.
Like a butterfly in an aquarium.
I’m working my way back toward stability. Toward the same coffee shops every week. The same writing schedules. The same people around me. The same view out my window. A window.
A place to call my own once again.
I’m still traveling, however, still technically homeless, making regular visits back to Asheville to scope the terrain, leaving room for family visits to aquariums and any other adventures that may arise from the mountains to the sea.
I’m not rushing into anything, I’m approaching this next chapter wisely, I think, but I’m also not happy about it. I’m not content. I feel utterly displaced.
I almost do want to rush into things, simply pick a place and sign on the dotted line and let the consequences capsize me later.
“Seek discomfort” has become my motto in recent weeks, ever since discovering the guys of Yes Theory on YouTube. They’ve inspired me more than any other discovery in recent memory. Their brotherhood and their bravery and their benevolence. Their bleeding desire for others to join them, to be like them, saying “yes” to the uncomfortable things in life because yes is where the growth happens.
After all, a caterpillar curls up and encloses himself in a shell for days.
Waits.
And waits.
And waits and waits.
Then stretches and groans and presses with all his might. Pierces the once uncomfortable shell that’s no doubt grown quite comfortable the last few days.
And then she reenters discomfort with wings she’s never known, flying amid a three-dimensional world she’s never three-dimensionalized.
I imagine many in this life are comfortable to remain the caterpillar, or perhaps the chrysalis. Crawling. Or even unmoving.
It sounds lovely to be the butterfly, to have the spotted wings and ventures. But oh the process. The waiting and waiting, the changes upon changes one must first endure.
There is no zapping to the butterfly stage.
I imagine most of us want to be the butterfly but rarely the change required. And not just a singular change but multiple drastic, awkward, even painful changes.
Can’t we just take a supplement or hire a professional who can make this thing happen for us? Make us beautiful, make us soar?
To make this really personal really quickly: can’t I just be the butterfly with lifelong friends and eternal purpose? Without ever engaging with people or penning another word?
Here’s the thing: I’ve already blossomed in so many ways.
I don’t say that to be prideful, but I have. I’ve blossomed. Others have said so. I take them at their word, and I affirm my own growth in physical and metaphorical mirrors alike.
I have become a butterfly when once I thought I’d crawl or curl up in a ball forever. I’ve seen the world, or at least the continent, and I’ve written books, and I’ve made some of the best friends I could dare believe even existed.
And yet I remain trapped in so many ways. Cocooned by the next challenge, always another obstacle. Enclosed in an aquarium, of all things, of all the places.
Maybe one day my wings will shatter these glass walls. Perhaps one day I’ll flutter for Mongolia or Tanzania or some other faraway land. Narnia, Middle Earth.
But I’m learning that even there I’ll find another blockade. Another trapping. Another reason to give up and stop growing. To stick with what’s comfortable and find contentment in the lack, be it external or internal or both.
I could.
Or I could seek discomfort.
Keep fluttering.
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