CELERY
Hope for the Flowers, a book written by Trina Paulus, is the story of a caterpillar “who has trouble becoming what he really is.” Stripe the caterpillar realizes there has to be more to life than just crawling, eating, and getting bigger. He is restless and bored. He joins a mound of caterpillars crawling on top of one another to get to the top, only to discover that there’s nothing on top and no one really knows why or cares. Stripe goes down with Yellow, a friend he had made on the way up. But on the ground, Stripe takes time to find a better way. However, with Yellow’s support and encouragement, he decides to follow the right route and finally turns into a butterfly. This is his identity, the meaning, and purpose of his existence – to be hope for the flowers.
The process of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly is accompanied by work, struggle, and difficulty. It comes in phases, and the waiting period is long. However, it is the suffering and the waiting that makes the butterfly beautiful.
I see myself as the butterfly struggling through different stages and evolving into the person I was created to be. I have a mind to be creative, a soul to be immortal, and the possibilities of my development as a person are endless. Yet, unlike the butterfly, my “Metamorphosis” will only come at the end of my life. In the meantime, I live fully in this awesome adventure of getting there.
*Written with the assistance of Alice E. Gonzaga
Great blog, Celia! Congratulations! Eager to hike in WV n look for White Butterflies. Your blog will give me lots of material for reflection, meditation; memories of our friendship, reasons to smile inside n out. Maraming salamat! Your future Tanseco Sis ?❤️?❣️?❣️?❤️
Thank you for your warm response, my adopted Tanseco Sis! This website is not mine alone, Lolita. I encourage you and all the others who will visit this space to give life to whitebutterfly by your own personal contribution. Perhaps, a piece of Mangyan spirituality in poetry?
Will have to choose carefully to do justice to the Mangyans’ ambahan (poetry). Give me time!
Sending you this great insight of a psychiatrist who, through her personal experience, became a white butterfly – as this site is called.
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Dolly, thank you so much for sending this famous quote from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. This well-known writer in three sentences was able to capture the full meaning and essense of what a person, like the butterfly, undergoes before he becomes who he may be.
Remembering the late Father Pat Hidalgo Lim who, as early as the 60’s, would often speak about the butterfly and the caterpillar so often at weddings, baptisms, wakes and funerals which he officiated. He said the same thing about a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly…about man struggling to become his aspiration; woman constantly challenged to achieve.
Yes, Corinna! All who knew him, including me, saw this. At his wake, butterflies adorned the walls and as a visitor left the place, he was given a paper butterfly to take home in his memory.
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