I was once walking and decided to take a break, lying in the grass. With my eyes closed, I was swimming in the warm light of a late summer afternoon when I overheard whispers coming from above me. There were voices in the cherry tree that offered me its shadow, the voices of a caterpillar talking to a butterfly.
- “Here I am, eating leaves all day long, waiting for my time to come. It feels like a never-ending waiting room, a stupidly long elevator ride.”
- “I remember those days fondly. I didn’t have to think about where to go, constantly looking for flowers and partners or escaping birds chasing me. You should enjoy your youth while it lasts, the freedom you have here.”
- “Which freedom are you talking about? I am bound to stay in the tree where my mother happened to lay her eggs. I never chose this place. When I’m older, my wings will take me wherever I want to go.”
- “But you can already move a lot compared to when you were an egg. You can choose which leaf to move to! Why do you believe growing wings will make you satisfied?”
- “Moving is so effortful and slow. Even if I decided to crawl in the same direction for one week, I would never move more than a few kilometers. My universe is tiny, and I am trapped in the arbitrary randomness, the contingencies that brought me to life here. When I fly, I’ll be able to make informed choices. I will fly for thousands of kilometers, get a small preview of all the landscapes before deciding where to settle. And if I don’t want to settle, I can live a nomadic life for as long as I’d like.”
- “You are giving too much weight to the place where you live. Who you are is being decided right now. The caterpillar, the egg, the chrysalisis I used to be are still alive in me. The same is true for you. The caterpillar you are will shape the very preferences you’ll want your wings to fulfill.
You talk like you are waiting for the ability to move fast and far to start living, but what you are doing now matters. The resources you accumulate are crucial for you to grow up, and the choices you make today, the life you live, will be part of who you’ll become. There is a way to appreciate life at all the stages.”
- “How infuriating it is to hear that! The life I live is not about me; it’s determined by the environment I found myself in. And yes, sure, you are technically correct; there is a material continuity between who I am right now and the butterfly I’ll become. But I have no leverage on that; the chains of influence are out of my control; this is not a choice. There is nothing I could do today that will have a strong impact on my future self, except maybe climbing to the top of this tree and letting a bird eat me. Until I can fly, I am a self-refuelling gas container. I would have preferred not being conscious during this part of my life.”
- “But your life will never be about what you call ‘you.’ You will continue to be shaped by the random events you encounter along your way, the partners you meet, and the wind that pushes you in unexpected directions.
If you don’t accept that today, you’ll be disappointed as a butterfly. You’ll fight to remove all outside influences on your decisions. Perhaps you will try to derive your life choices from first principles. Maybe you’ll look at the parity of the digits of pi to answer the simplest yes/no question, ruling out any perturbation that could influence your judgment. Congratulations, you’ve removed all sources of outside contingencies to live a purely random life! Is that really your goal?”
- “Of course it is not. I don’t want to block the influence of the world to follow a deterministic program. I want to observe, experiment, and learn! If I use the right tools, I will create an accurate model of the world; I will know in advance the effects of my actions, and I’ll be even more free. I’ll be able to act without being blinded by my ignorance, pursuing my goals more efficiently. These are the wings of my mind!
If you are so happy with all the random events happening to you, why are you even moving? If you move, doesn’t it mean you are looking for something better than where you are?”
- “I aim to be satisfied with all the moments I live, regardless of what is happening to me. I move when I feel like it, the flaps of the wings I provoke are the same as the wind pushing me.”
The butterfly was interrupted by a slow, deep voice. It was so slow that I pinched myself to maintain my attention on the words. It was so low-pitched that I could feel the ground moving beneath me. The cherry tree began to speak.
“I have no wings, but I see and feel. My roots and branches spread up and down, and my trunk thickens, but all you can see is how my leaves move in the wind, how my branches oscillate when a bird lands, or when one breaks in a storm.
There is a tree growing in each one of you. Hearing you speak, you are the movement of its leaves, swirling and spiralling when the world blows at you.
My seed landed in ground filled with rocks, and my roots are growing around them. There is no point in running away from them or making yourself become a rock.
Grow, simply grow.”
At this point, I realized I had heard what I needed to hear. I stood up, put my backpack on, and continued my walk.
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