Six months ago I was living in the spare room at my Granny’s house in Laurens, SC. There is no bed in this room, so I went out and bought an air mattress — one that I had to replace twice over the nine months I was there because, as it turns out, three months is the maximum amount of time a grown man can sleep on one before it wears out and loudly explodes in the middle of the night.
Ask me how I know.
This spare room also only has one window. A window that is usually covered by blinds and a curtain. So, while I was in this room, I primarily had a choice between two views:
The vanity mirror attached to a dresser that is a few decades older than me
Four beige walls — one of which had a message that I couldn’t help but read every day
The message on that wall was a Bible scripture written below a beautiful image of a butterfly with several little butterflies flanking it. It read:
“He has made everything beautiful in its time.”
And it was immediately ironic because I was currently living through a pretty ugly time in my own life. A few months before arriving in Laurens, I’d quit my “dream” software job in Pittsburgh due to a toxic manager. That’s not why I moved to Laurens, though. I had plenty saved up that would have held me over until I found a new job — so I definitely could have stayed in Pittsburgh if I really wanted to.
But I felt called to return to South Carolina. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know for how long (though I hoped not very long) — I just knew that it felt like I was supposed to be there.
And I didn’t like it.
It genuinely felt like the Universe was holding me captive. Even though I had the means to leave whenever I felt like it, inwardly I felt stuck, embarrassed, and confused about how I’d ended up where I was.
Every day when I woke up on my air mattress, I was greeted by that message on the wall. A message attributed to a God I didn’t really believe in anymore, by the way. I was raised Christian but have not identified as one for over a decade. But this messaging didn’t bother me for that reason. I’m deeply of the belief that there is only One God and that we all share it, whether we realize it or not.
This messaging bothered me because it stood in stark contrast to my lived reality at the time. As if it were intentionally mocking me.
I’ve long said that my superpower is being able to find beauty anywhere. And it was like God, the Christian one or otherwise, had intentionally placed me in this situation to ask, “Can you find beauty here?”
I discovered that I could.
Just watching my Granny exist day-to-day was a masterclass in beauty. As far as I know, she has never had a “real” job — she has also never had a day off from work. Every day she wakes up around the same time and does whatever the day asks of her. Twice a week it is laundry. Other days it’s cooking, or cleaning, or straightening, or ironing, or doing her hair. There’s always something for her to do, and she always does it — whether she feels like it or not. Getting to observe this with adult eyes was incredibly enlightening for me.
I think for those of us around millennial age, there’s been a huge emphasis on work-life balance. But for my Granny, work and life aren’t that separate. And perhaps the reason we make such a big deal about work-life balance is because the work we’re doing is so disconnected from our lives that too much of it feels like our lives are being stolen from us. My Granny lives an integrated life in this sense. One that I aspire to have someday too.
By the time I’d gotten to Laurens, my great-aunt Bear, my Granny’s youngest living sister, was already pretty sick. She’d been in and out of the hospital over the past year or two because of cancer. It was stressing my Granny out a lot because Bear was her last living sibling. My Granny has outlived all 12 of her other siblings, and though she never admitted it, I’m sure she would have preferred if Bear had been the exception.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, and in February of this year, Aunt Bear passed away in my Granny’s arms.
I was asleep at the time but woke up to a text from my mother’s sister telling me that Aunt Bear had passed overnight. When I opened the door that morning, my Granny was already back. I went up to her and held her for a bit while she cried about losing her baby sister.
It was a really beautiful moment. A full-circle moment. A moment that made the suffering, confusion, and frustration I’d experienced over the past eight months worth it.
Here I was at 35, holding my 90-year-old grandmother who was mourning her 80-year-old “baby” sister — and it revealed some things to me about life, time, and beauty. We spend the majority of our lives resisting time as if it’s the enemy of life. In reality, time is the canvas on which life paints its story. In this story, being around for 90 years does not make one exempt from the grief of losing your kid sister. And only being around for 35 years doesn’t make you unqualified to comfort someone who’s been around much longer than you.
What makes life beautiful is not being, getting, or doing what you want all of the time. Rather, what makes life beautiful is being fully present with what’s happening right now — even if what’s happening right now is ugly — because that ugliness is what allows us to recognize beauty when it inevitably returns.
I live in Chicago now. The city that I wanted to live in while feeling trapped in Laurens.
Not only that, I live in a high-rise in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in downtown Chicago. I have a bed again, and while I do think I should have splurged a bit more on it, it is far more comfortable than the air mattress I was sleeping on six months ago — and hasn’t exploded yet.
The number one thing that sold me on this apartment was the view. Instead of one window, I have four now. They all face eastward toward the lake, and each day I look out and remember just how limited my view had been months prior.
Though, to call it limited isn’t totally fair. Perhaps focused is a better word — because that’s precisely what that limited view allowed me to do.
Not only did I get to grow my relationship with my Granny, I also deepened my relationship with my siblings and a close cousin. I fully forgave my father and got to witness him evolve in a way I never thought possible.
My mental state initially caused me to let my body go, but about six months in, I recognized this while looking in that ancient vanity mirror and started working to get back into shape. Except, this time, the shape I took was a conscious result of looking in the mirror and not seeing something I liked reflected back at me instead of the unconscious result of getting addicted to the feedback loop of posting myself doing yoga and handstands half-naked on Instagram.
Those nine months I spent in Laurens were largely undesirable — but they also undeniably put me in a position to go somewhere I’d never been before.
Last month I started noticing these flies on the windows of my Chicago apartment. Honestly, it was bizarre to see insects so high up to begin with, but what made it even stranger was that it seemed like the flies were following me around my apartment to get a view of me.
What I mean is, I could have three blinds closed and one open for me to see out of, and there’d be a fly in that one open spot. If I moved from my living area to my office area, it seemed like the fly would follow me so that it could keep an eye on me. And not just flies, but moths and other flying insects.
This went on daily for over a month.
There’s this idea in some esoteric communities of “monitoring spirits” — spirits that temporarily possess the bodies of insects or other flying creatures in order to spy on someone. I don’t really believe in this but, being open-minded and exasperated by feeling stalked by flies daily, I said out loud, “If you’re a spirit, what are you trying to tell me? That I stink?! And if you’re well-meaning, why don’t you come as something beautiful like a butterfly?”
I shit you not, the very next week I was sitting on my couch watching something when I saw something zip past my window out of the corner of my eye. I took a closer look and, lo and behold, there was this beautiful monarch butterfly that just kept flying past my window.
I’ve had many, many surreal moments in my life — but this experience quickly became one of the most surreal because it was one of the few times when I’d asked for a sign and gotten it precisely the way I asked.
Not only that, butterflies have been a positive sign for me ever since I was graced by one in the garden outside the hospital after the doctor told me my mom was going to pass. That butterfly had followed me from Charlotte, to DC, to Pittsburgh, and now to Chicago.
For nine months I was forced to look at the picture of a butterfly on a beige wall and wonder when it would be time for me to be made beautiful again. Last week I was forced to look at that butterfly again except, this time, as part of the breathtakingly beautiful view of downtown Chicago that I get to call my own.
The path of self-realization is a path of dying again and again — and of being reborn anew. That’s why butterfly imagery is so powerful for those of us on this path.
I’m fairly certain there is no caterpillar who knows what their destiny is going to be. Caterpillars don’t hang butterfly posters on their bedroom walls and tell themselves each day that “one day that’s gonna be me.” Instead, they fill their caterpillar days doing caterpillar things.
Perhaps that caterpillar thing is quitting the job they spent so long dreaming of having. Perhaps that caterpillar thing is packing its life into a Honda Civic and migrating hundreds of miles across the map. Perhaps that caterpillar thing is healing relationships with its father and siblings, or maybe just observing how an older butterfly lives out her final days.
But what a caterpillar cannot do is force itself to evolve before its time.
That, of course, does not mean that it’s not already beautiful, though — and the biggest lesson I’ve gained through this experience is that the caterpillar is beautiful too.
Even though it crawls close to the ground.
Even though its existence doesn’t seem to be much more than eating and pooping.
Even though there’s no guarantee that it will ever become more than what it currently is — that is enough.
In some alternate dimension, I never left my Granny’s house. But that version of Micheal ended up creating a beautiful life too, I’m sure of it — not because his outside looks the way he wants it to look, but because his inside is full of depth and wonder. I’m convinced that Micheal in any reality will eventually find beauty where he is because the beauty he seeks is always within himself.
There are two things we must know in order to get where we’re going. The first is where we’d like to go — obviously — but the second is where we currently are. We can never forsake where we are for where we’re going because the two are never truly separate at all — no matter how distant they may seem.
A creative life is one that surprises you. Even up to the point when it enters its cocoon, a caterpillar has no idea what its life as a butterfly will look like. But that doesn’t stop it from enclosing itself in darkness and allowing life to lead it where it’s destined to be.
And I’ve learned that we can employ this same wisdom.
Instead of needing to know exactly how each step of the journey looks, I think it’s best to just put the address of where you’d like to go in your heart, then fully commit to being wherever you currently are — and let life navigate.
Sure, the journey will undoubtedly have some ugly moments, and you may not end up exactly where you expected — but you’ll emerge with wings that will allow you to rise above obstacles that would have kept you blocked before.
I have no plans to return to living at my Granny’s house again, but that doesn’t mean my time being a caterpillar is over for good. I’m going to enjoy this view in the sky as long as it lasts — but I’ll also never forget the view that preceded it.
And if I ever end up crawling on my belly again, then I will take record of all the beautiful things I discover on the ground.
are we clear?
Thanks for reading! If this resonated with you in some way, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
And if you feel like questioning yourself a little more, check out Questionable (Morals), an app I’m building. It’s a moral dilemma quiz with no right answers that lets you see, in real time, how your choices compare with everyone else’s.
Wow! The read was phenomenal. I enjoyed reading about your connection with butterflies particularly. It’s empowering to read about the insight you have with beauty. Thank you for sharing.