Wait... Don't judge my cover. Give me a chance...
I am in the process of turning into a beautiful butterfly...
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes
it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
There is always a beginning and an end of
any organism, action, feeling, and story.
To arrive at any result, or for it to be
“THE” moment you are at now or the end of your road, there is an evident
passage which is a common walkthrough one must take; the aging process.
And then there is the process that
differentiate us, that makes us all unique, that brings judgement; the building
of character and personality.
However, our journey is never this simple…
Why is it that on this road to discovery
and construction of who we are, we are rarely looked at based on our possibilities
and potential, but merely on first impressions…
First impressions are made when situations
or people are being judged by what you see on the outside, or hearsay. For
people, typically, first impressions are made based on appearances, behaviour
and demeanour. These are all preconceived, superficial assumptions.
While we can’t negate the fact that we all
are guilty (to a certain extreme) of being judgmental and base many of our (re)actions
and relationships on that first
impression, and while we can also agree that first impression is the lasting
impression we need to make a conscious effort to not let it be the last impression.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is
a metaphoric quote, that simply encourages us to be more tolerant, patient, not
so quick to “pull the trigger” and give in to misconceptions but see if there
is more depth to the person (or situation).
While on the way to catching the bus to the
ferry that would take us to Cape Cod , my
daughter stopped us, screaming about the ugliness of “this weird ugly bug” that
was crawling on the ground. My friend, my niece and I converged around the
creeping bug, stared and finally realized it was a caterpillar. Then it dawned
on me; aren’t caterpillars supposed to turn into beautiful butterflies? It was
just at the beginning of its journey. I hurried and took a picture but then I
realized that I would not be there to see the transformation. I will never know
what colour of the rainbow it will turn out to be but I knew, that day, it
wasn’t at its full potential…
My niece and daughter both asked me why I
bothered to take a picture of an ugly caterpillar; I told them, “I’m taking the
picture because I’ve learned a lesson. I will blog about it and call it Black caterpillar turned into a beautiful
butterfly…”
They both giggled and I smiled because
truly I had learned a lesson…
We are all worth having the chance to reach
our potential, regardless of the baggage we carry; from mannerisms,
characteristics, appearances, circumstances and predicaments which all are not
reasons enough to label and put anyone on the short list.
It is definitely a bad habit (judging) that
I personally need to conquer. I need to learn to see beyond that first
interaction and to not be so hang up on the “first 7 seconds rule to make a
good impression”.
We all need to be cognisant to always
remember “Do unto others as
you would have others do unto you.”
To the beautiful caterpillar within us…
RosieSandz
