How do you FIght your Eggs?
Written by Rebecca Firegrave on Sunday the 16th of January 2011
Eggs crack. That's what they do. And they become something new. A scrambled egg, a boiled egg, a poached-to-the-point-of-perfection egg. Butterflies had their past lives, and bees are only bees before they sting. Circumstances change things. If Humpty Dumpty never sat on the wall in the first place, those soldiers never would have had a sunny-side-up breakfast. And a tree stood tall for a hundred years, once a storm brews, could be snapped like an anorexic's arm in a literal flash.
So should the caterpillar have wanted to be something pretty that didn't make the girls squeal so, what could he have done? Wear a hat? Nice shoes? Get his six little legs swaggering, and have a nonchalant wink 'n' a smile? No. Get himself in a Disney film, maybe. But a caterpillar he would be until nature filled out the necessary paperwork.
Alternatively, he could ask the question of a somewhat wiser caterpillar:
Who
are
YOU
?
Lucky for humans, our consciousness gives us some control of our circumstances, unlike the trees. But once we've had our say, what happens, happens. If it rains, it rains. And all we can do, as the trees know so well, is let the millions of little droplets live out their own little destinies, without disdain on behalf of our newly ironed hair, or greed for our garden of thirsty gladioli, but know it is raining, and watch, while our own paperwork is duly done, and no longer waste time shopping for hats.