You can relax. I have the answer. Well, actually Nature has the answer.

I’m just the messenger.

Nature is where I’ve always looked for the answers to dilemmas that seem to elude humankind. I just figured out early on in Life that any intelligence that was capable of creating a system so complex, diverse, inherently in balance, self-sustaining and just plain visually magnificent had pretty much calculated and provided for all the possible combinations and permutations that might arise. So, the answers were actually built into the problems. Hence, every problem is an opportunity to uncover the answer within.

This brings me to the caterpillar, metamorphosis and the butterfly.

It’s a complicated process but let me sum it up. When a caterpillar has eaten enough it turns into what is called a pupa. To do this it stops eating and finds somewhere safe, becomes very still, molts its skin then grows a much thicker and stronger one.  A lot of the caterpillar’s old body dies. It then sort of digests itself from the inside out. Not all the tissue is destroyed and some of the insect’s old tissue passes on to its new self.  A new body is then formed out of the “soup” that the insect’s digestive juices have made of the old larval body. This rebuilding process is called histogenesis.  During this time the insect is very vulnerable because it cannot run away which is why insects try to choose somewhere safe to hide when going through this incredible change.

Why the lesson in metamorphosis in a blog about the economy?

The President of Iran, in viewing our current economic crisis, sees the caterpillar stewing in its own juices, so to speak. He is frozen in time and can’t see past the moment. In reality he is witnessing the end of a growth phase and, because of his limited understanding and perspective, thinks he is witnessing the end of the process itself.  He is stuck in mourning the death of the caterpillar and so cannot see the birth of the butterfly.  

Which is why the answer to the question “to panic or not to panic?” is: Not to panic!

What the economy and our entire value system are experiencing is the natural process of moving us from caterpillar to butterfly. Yes it’s a trying time. Yes we will have to find a safe place in which to do this internal work. Yes we will have to shed some skin in order to make room for new, improved cells to take root and multiply. And yes we will have to rebuild.

The important point to remember is that this so-called “problem” is really an opportunity for us to transform ourselves and our nation into something much more beautiful, while also remembering that the answer to the future is locked away inside the caterpillar...inside us.

Inherent in our crisis is the answer to it. Nature is designed that way and we are a part of Nature.

Only by our willingness to shed the skin in which we have become complacent and by our courage to see the process through…will we come to experience the beauty we are truly capable of and, oh yes, to joyfully fly away leaving the Ahmadinejads behind.

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