For several years now, my family has received a box of caterpillars in the mail every summer. Through clear cup containers, we watch them turn into butterflies. The instructions include transferring the chrysalides so the butterflies emerge in a spacious, netted container.
This year I ordered and promptly forgot about the caterpillars. Weeks later they arrived, and I hunted for their net homes to make the transfer, only to discover they’d been misplaced in our move to a new town.
A few days later we woke to see the butterflies hadn’t waited for their transfer to emerge, and something we’d never seen before happened. The butterflies had begun to fight. They had outgrown the space, and they were pressing each other against the walls of the cups, trying to claim all the space they could.
Read the rest over at The Glorious Table my post is titled Don’t Let Your Calling Be Defined By Your Critics