It is a vanity and a mistake to imagine ourselves separate from the rest of the beings on this planet.
We choose to forget we are animals and part of an interweaving of all life. We imagine ourselves as superior to a tree or a fish. Yet we only have to look a little closer to see our remarkable similarities in design.
Look at a diagram of a brain and then examine the branches of a tree or the intricacies of coral.
Read about the composition of the earth’s crust and then check your own element ingredient list.
I learned about the endangered monarch butterflies when reading Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, Flight Behaviour. Then, last week I went to Science World and watched Flight of the Butterflies; a wonderful film about their incredible migration.
What can I tell you? Those ephemeral butterflies have been fluttering on the fringes of my brain ever since.
These sci-fi creatures undergo brutal transformations, from egg to stripy caterpillar to constricted chrysalis (that involves their back splitting open to reveal the wings), until their final triumphant emergence as a butterfly.
But here’s the strangest thing…
It takes the average monarch butterfly four generations to reach its destiny.
This means, that although a monarch might leave Southern Ontario to begin her migration to Mexcio, she will personally never reach her objective, a goal that I’m quite sure she couldn’t articulate.
What she does know, with her entire being, is that she must head toward Mexico. Enroute, she will lay eggs and that next generation’s offspring will carry on the pilgrimage south.
But even that generation’s butterfly won’t reach the final objective.
Instead, second-and third-generation of beauties will repeat the scenario, hop-scotching their way south. Despite impossible conditions, lousy survival rates, no GPS on the dash, and crazy distances of 2500 miles, all those that survive the generational journey will eventually reach the spot on the Sierra Madre mountains that is so necessary for their ongoing, and very threatened, survival as a species.
This fourth-generation ‘super-butterfly’ will go through the same stages of life as her ancestors, but instead of only a two-to-six-week life span, she will live six-to-eight months. Long enough to start the whole four-generational process again.
At any one time most of us are in touch with about four generations; great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, ourselves and perhaps our children or, depending where we are in life, some variation on that theme.
What if I framed my place in the world by using the template of the monarch?
Is it possible that I am at the beginning of the next cycle of four generations?
Or am I somewhere in the middle generation? Perhaps it’s simply my fate to pave the way for the fourth-generation – whatever that destiny might be.
Then again, maybe I’m at the end of this particular multi-generational round. Might I be the culmination of my great-great-grandmother’s destiny? A plan that she might never have known or articulated?
I like this idea of living as if any or all of these possibilities could be true. I choose to believe that my life is a key and integral part of this grand beauty. Naturally, I decided on My Monarch Migration Mantra (more commonly known as MMMM).
Trust the process.
Follow your instincts.
Keep the faith.
Follow your path, no matter how strange it might appear.
Know your life is important.
Realize your beauty.
Feel free to add your own spin on this theme. I’d love to hear your thoughts…
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What a powerful piece of writing. You might want to submit it to Huffington Post Canada – very timely, and the mantra is spine-tingling for a bunch of ordinary words strung together
Thanks Laurie. Glad you found the mantra worthwhile. I’ve really been trying to live full on, as open and as clear as possible. Heart forward as it were 🙂
It’s rather frightening and exhilirating. I like your Huffington idea, I’ll give it a whirl.
I have ordered the book, will let you know my thoughts.
Yes Colleen, man never learns from the past. Thanks for suggesting the book. I’ll certainly look for it, as you know I am very interested in the environment.
Is the photo Lake Bala?
Looking forward to your thoughts on Flight Behaviour. I’m sorry to say that I no longer know where I took that photo was taken…somewhere in Wales, but not sure where 🙂
I totally agree with your sentiment in the above piece. Man is part of nature just as much as every other species on earth. By coincidence I am just reading “The Future of Life” by E.O.Wilson where he says “GMC can diminish biological diversity in other ways. In a now famous example, the bacterial toxin used to protect corn is carried in pollen by wind currents for distances of 60 metres or more from the cultivated fields. Then, landing on milkweed plants, they are capable of killing the caterpillars of monarch butterflies feeding there”.
GM Crops, fortunately is prohibited in Europe.
If you haven’t already read this book, I thoroughly recommend it.
Hi Catherine. Wow. I really wish we would follow Europe’s lead.
We keep playing with the natural dynamics, never learning history’s lesson that there are always unintended consequences. Thanks for the book suggestion. I’ll definitely look for it.
I hope you get a chance (if you haven’t done so already) to read Flight Behaviour. It’s a good novel that has the added benefit of some really interesting information about the monarch.