Le Papillon - The Butterfly

'Le Papillon,' ink and paper, Pablo Picasso, 1936.

Besides being the name of a very funny looking breed of dog, Papillon means butterfly in French.

Et, voici!

I stumbled across this beautiful line drawing some time during my teenage years.  I think I was looking for a good enough reason to get a tattoo.  I've always said that if I get something permanently etched in my skin, it's got to be a masterpiece of a work done by a master.

Just so you know, I never got a 'Picasso' tattoo, nor probably never will.

Then, I liked it's clean continual line, and the freedom in the ink, done with such whimsy, it seems as if the figure might flutter off the paper.  I appreciated this beauty for the sheer aesthetic qualities, but after all these years, this image still calls to me, and I think it is because of the energetic or symbolic implications behind the image and the title: The Butterfly.

Come to think of it, the butterfly's journey has held me captive since I was of reading age.  Anyone remember this classic?  There's a wonderfully read version recorded here, probably read by a former school teacher.

In this story, the caterpillar boastfully brags to any animal around the pond who will listen "When I grow up, I am going to be something different!"  She meets a polliwog along her tour who is excited for the caterpillar's transformation.  He soon finds, though, like the caterpillar, he will also 'grow up' into something different.  He suspects since the caterpillar is turning into a butterfly, he is going to as well.  After watching the caterpillar wrap herself in the cocoon, the polliwog patiently and excitedly waits to witness his friend's metamorphosis before his own.  When the butterfly emerges from it's wrapping, the polliwog gets so excited, he jumps up and down.  Wait.  Jumps?!  Yes, the polliwog was so enthralled with the butterfly's seemingly conceited metamorphosis that he failed to witness his own.  He had become a frog!  At first, the polliwog turned frog is slightly disappointed.  He thought he was going to become a butterfly, but soon he grows to love his new embodiment. The last few pages of the book shows a new caterpillar boasting of his future change, but the frog is too busy to notice, he is admiring his own transformation in the reflection of the water.

I even remember in first grade getting a monarch butterfly kit in the mail, and watching the caterpillars wrap their cocoons and eventually hatch into beautiful butterflies.  How amazing a transformation from literally one thing to another.

So why Papillon?  Why Papillon Project?

I feel I've reached a time in my life where my physical sense of the world is being challenged through recent rising health issues, which has also forced me to see the world a bit differently from all aspects of my life, be that physical, spiritual, emotional, creatively, professionally...

In the last year, much has been accomplished by yours truly at age 25, and yet, I find myself no where near where I expected to be if someone had asked me to predict my fate a year in advanced.  When I graduated college, a few years ago, I was faced with the very blunt reality that planning will only make your brain feel better in the long run--as far as 'life stuff' goes.  It really does no good, and yet, here I am years later slightly perplexed that my life hasn't unrolled in some kind of linear fashion, right?

I am reframing, as it were, my own perception of myself.  And, as of late, that seems to be happening sometimes on a month-to-month basis.  Like the polliwog's situation in the story, sometimes I feel our society projects the butterfly's outlook on the world.  'When I grow up, I am going to be different.' -- the butterfly knew exactly what she was going to be, how she was going to get there, and the confidence and practical skills, tools, and knowledge it took to get there for herself.  And here's this little polliwog observing and excited for it's own transformation to become a butterfly, too, only to find out that not all pond dwelling transformers sprout wings like a butterfly.  In fact, he became something entirely different.

From a very small age, children now are force fed a path toward success and employment:  go to school, go to college, get job, marry, have kids, retire...let your kids rinse and repeat.  No one ever told me in school that life was entirely and almost absurdly not like the linear line toward retirement that perhaps out grandfather's had.

I wrote in my last post I am learning.  I am learning now more than ever about who I am, and who I am becoming, and who I am becoming...

I let it play like an old, beloved broken record, because aren't we all in constant motion toward becoming something slightly newer than we are now?  Haven't we all heard about the 'Chapters' of our lives?  The person you were when you were 15 versus the person you are when you are 30?  Hell!  Like I said earlier, I feel like I am swapping lenses on a month to month basis!  Like the little polliwog in the story, most of the time, pre-adulthood, we are completely unaware of the various lenses we will look at ourselves and our lives through during each of our lives here on Earth.

I am finding, too, that this reframing can be quite uncomfortable.  As human beings, I believe we are adaptable to many many things.  Unfortunately, one of the many 'limiting beliefs,' and quite frankly, lies, we are told as young humans is that change is, or has to be hard.  It really doesn't have to be, I am learning, too.  You decide how you react.  What it can be is uncomfortable, perhaps...which brings me to my next point about our lovely little Papillon:

It's an odd act--wrapping up in a silken thread, then struggling to break free--and, as that wide-eyed first grader, I recall watching the hatch and seeing the Monarchs struggle, and fearfully asking my teacher, "Is that blood?"  "No," she replied, "the butterfly's coloring drips off sometimes in this process like paint."  Something registered in a younger me, then, that that butterfly's struggle was nothing to create fear in myself about.  In fact, it was something surrounded by beauty--like paint.  I've heard that if you help a butterfly out of their cocoon when they are 'hatching,' really re-birthing themselves, you will actually kill the emerging butterfly in the process.  The struggle is necessary to come out on the other side.

I'm learning that, too.

A friend of mine synchronistically sent this to me today...

A lovely reminder that ten years from now, we may be altogether a foreign person than who we are right now.  I feel like the best way to begin to cope with such a large thought (and this is the only way I plan on seeing things, for now at least.  Note:  I could be wrong, and note: 'tis only my opinion)  But, I think a great way to begin to digest these times of reframing in our lives is to view ourselves with compassion and love.  By way of having compassion toward yourself, I think you will find the compassion contagious for others. Carry grace and love for the great changes that will occur, and hold hope in your heart that, although the path may not be a linear climb, the rough patches make you richer, and realize that good awaits.  Always ahead.

Someone I love very much consistently reminds me, "You can't stop your good, you can only slow it down."

Somehow, I think the butterflies intrinsically know and have these qualities; when they are caterpillars, and when they are butterflies.

I was reminded of all these things and more today while on a walk during my lunch break.  Mother Nature offered a lovely reminder, as Mother Nature so often does when she wants to communicate with my soul.  I stepped out of my dark office and in to the sunlight of the day, and first thing I meet:

Le Papillon.