"What of my future self is in my right now?"
When I was about about 8 or 9 living in a small town in Kentucky there was a large group of caterpillars in pupation embedded on brush and a chain link fence - what seemed near a hundred small white, silky cocoons. Curious about the insides, I picked up a stick and poked one of them. It punctured the cocoon and out oozed some brown goo. My initial reaction was a slight shock, as I expected to find something that halfway between a caterpillar and a moth or butterfly.
I internalized this and years went by. When I thought about it again in college I looked at caterpillars and butterflies almost as two different entities. The caterpillar dies in the cocoon I thought, and a new being emerges from the soupy sludge contained within the cocoon, feeding on the remains of what brought it there.
I assumed that pretty much everybody knew that cocoons held this sloppy goop that in no way resembled a caterpillar. Until today when I listened to the episode "Black Box" in a podcast of Radiolab. The last segment in the episode, a producer for the show, Molly Webster, examined the process of pupation. And when they describe the process it surprised me that this was not so much common knowledge.
I began to wonder how this has affected how I view transformation in general. What I observed led me to believe that the caterpillar dies for the butterfly to live. If humans had such a state (whatever that would be), they would not be conscious of their previous selves. To change in a significant way, could a person still be themselves?
What came as a surprise was that there is something that survives. In the cocoon, the goop contains little pieces of tissue, including a small part of a brain, and some form of memory is retained (listen to the episode for full details). Something form the past does survive. The most intriguing part for me though, was hearing what is already in the caterpillar before the process - there is a thin layer in the back of the caterpillar that has somewhat of a template for a butterfly, including very thin wings. Which means that the caterpillar already contains traces of its future before it begins its metamorphosis.
It made me wonder what traces of my future I have in me now. And what traces of myself now existed in me back when I was 8 or 9? Can tracing such a connection give me insight into my future as well? And can that help me shape my future?
I internalized this and years went by. When I thought about it again in college I looked at caterpillars and butterflies almost as two different entities. The caterpillar dies in the cocoon I thought, and a new being emerges from the soupy sludge contained within the cocoon, feeding on the remains of what brought it there.
I assumed that pretty much everybody knew that cocoons held this sloppy goop that in no way resembled a caterpillar. Until today when I listened to the episode "Black Box" in a podcast of Radiolab. The last segment in the episode, a producer for the show, Molly Webster, examined the process of pupation. And when they describe the process it surprised me that this was not so much common knowledge.
I began to wonder how this has affected how I view transformation in general. What I observed led me to believe that the caterpillar dies for the butterfly to live. If humans had such a state (whatever that would be), they would not be conscious of their previous selves. To change in a significant way, could a person still be themselves?
What came as a surprise was that there is something that survives. In the cocoon, the goop contains little pieces of tissue, including a small part of a brain, and some form of memory is retained (listen to the episode for full details). Something form the past does survive. The most intriguing part for me though, was hearing what is already in the caterpillar before the process - there is a thin layer in the back of the caterpillar that has somewhat of a template for a butterfly, including very thin wings. Which means that the caterpillar already contains traces of its future before it begins its metamorphosis.
It made me wonder what traces of my future I have in me now. And what traces of myself now existed in me back when I was 8 or 9? Can tracing such a connection give me insight into my future as well? And can that help me shape my future?