“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”
This quote can be interpreted as the potential one holds within themselves. Butterflies are beautiful, they often symbolize the soul of someone who is no longer present on earth, along with renewal, and are looked at as a helping hand in challenging times. I can remember my first day of senior year, I was sitting in my car before my first class and saw two monarch butterflies fluttering their wings around me. I instantly thought of my grandmother and great-aunt. My grandmother passed away when I was younger and for whatever reason I have always connected her with butterflies. This same idea transferred over when my great-aunt passed away years later. I guess it comes from the saying, “butterflies appear when angels are near”. As I’ve gotten older, they have become even more symbolic for me, as the most impactful moments in my life have involved these beautiful creatures. They have a sense of innocence to them, happiness and genuine love, whereas caterpillars are looked at as unattractive bugs. In reality the transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly is remarkable, it displays the potential held prior to its rebirth, where the caterpillar digests itself before “hatching” into a butterfly.
R. Buckminster Fuller, American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist created this quote. He was born on July 12, 1895, in Milton, Massachusetts and studied at Harvard but got expelled twice. Fuller was a Unitarian which is a nontrinitarian branch of Christian Theology. He is most famous for his geodesic domes. This has been used as parts of military radar stations, environmental protest camps, exhibition attractions and civic buildings. With all of his achievement he has showed, similar to a butterfly, all of the potential held within himself.