I'm not interested in you telling me who you are. I want to know you ache for, what feeds your soul. I want to know if you can promise yourself to never again make apologies for your own intensity. I want to know whether or not your afraid to sit with yourself, and not move from distraction to distraction, and what that fear can possibly teach you. I want to know if you're willing to let the tidal wave of confusion and anger and rage and disappointment to wash over you, consume you. I want to know if you'll let sorrow, yours or another s, be your cocoon.I want to know if you can teach me to remember always that storms will pass, and that we never wade it alone. I want to know if you're willing to learn the language of the butterflies so that they can teach you how to be gentle, but resilient, and that the only way we can make it to our destination is by braving life's strongest winds together. I want to know if you truly understand that we don't burst forth from the ashes like a phoenix, but as a butterfly, who experiences transformations slowly, painfully--and who understand that those transformations are necessary for survival. Can you, like the Monarch, feed on its own chrysalis as a life source, knowing that your past will always be a part of you? I want to know if you can treat others as butterflies. Can you allow someone to simply find rest from fluttering on the tip of your forefinger? And will you not hold them back when they journey without you?
In the end, it doesn't matter what you study or what your goals are. What matters is whether or not you know that a butterfly only lives about 24 days, and that you, too, have to learn to accept your own mortality.
Find beauty. Be beauty. And then flutter off into the sunset.
