In the Soup
I want to change, said the caterpillar.
Okay, said the Master, here’s what you have to do. You’re going to turn your skin into a hard shell and then your enzymes will digest your entire body except for some very tiny messengers that have been there with you all along. Your body will become a soup of proteins. The little messengers will then tell all those proteins to make new things like antennae and wings. You’ll have to be very patient while they grow. Then, when you’re all done, you’ll have to struggle to break out of the chrysalis you made, stretch your wings and learn to fly.
Oh, said the caterpillar. I didn’t know. That seems painful.
Well, do you want to change? asked the Master
What will happen if I stay a caterpillar?
You’ll probably get eaten. And you’ll never get to fly.
So, I have to face change either way?
Yes, said the Master. That is the way.
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Long ago, when I was but nineteen or twenty, I was sitting in a tiny little apartment that I shared with a horrible friend (who in the end was a great teacher). I was sitting at my computer trying to write for my creative writing class. It all felt like caterpillar soup, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I am quite sure I was crying.
Well, fortunately for me, I had a dear redhead, awkward, gay pimply friend sitting beside me.
I don’t know what to write. I don’t even know myself. How can I write anything good? I cried.
What if you just write about how you don’t know yourself and can’t write anything well?
Oh. Can I do that?
Of course you can.
Here’s the thing folks, we’re all trying to build ourselves out of soup. Sure, some people have very stellar chrysalises that make you think they know exactly what they’re doing inside. And some are further ahead and flying circles around us in our little pool of confusion. But there’s just no escaping the soup.
I’ve wrestled with how much of my own struggle to share with the world. On my personal blog I write very candidly about what I’m learning, soup to nuts. But here, as I transition to a different career and a different role, I’ve felt unsure about how it would appear to potential clients to talk about my fears, insecurities, failings and victories. After my last post I had a mini Brene Brown vulnerability hangover. I panicked and texted friends, Is this how I should be? Is this what I should do? Will anyone trust me to massage them if they know I’m still trying to figure things out? I heard the little critical voice telling me to shut up, sit down and stop embarrassing myself.
But I keep coming back to the people who have helped me. And it wasn’t their perfection or their togetherness that inspired me. It was their willingness to be seen. My dear friend let me see that life could be lived David Bowie style - with crooked teeth and pimply face and wild hair. I took his advice, and I'm still writing from inside my chrysalis.
I also keep thinking of dear, beloved Rainer Maria Rilke, he who was not without struggle, who took the time to write letters to a young poet to help him find his way.
Every person who comes to my table puts their trust in me to hear their story. Our bodies are our stories. And when you tell me about your accidents and your heartaches, your surgeries and your struggles, “Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty...Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
I'm in the soup, folks. But I'm surrounded by butterflies.
Rilke worked alongside Rodin for many years, creating some of the best work of his life while watching him carve delicate human form out of stone.
Hopefully, we can do the same. If we’re both fully present, if we truly listen to that part of us that knows the way (we have it too), we can start to build something out of the soup.
After all, we have to become or we never get to fly.
