Metamorphosis
Eclosion is what I’m here for. This, Google tells me, is the name we have given to the butterfly’s process of emerging from its chrysalis. If you look at Cocoon’s Instagram history, you’ll see a big gap. In this quiet time, the business has been, well, cocooning. Practical inputs in my external world catalyzed changes. I pulled back from the hustle. I listened and reflected. More changes. More listening... Back and forth, the conversation between inner and outer world went until both sources spoke, It’s time, and thankfully, It’s ready.
It came to me during a meditation retreat that was centered on going inward, after I had put together a design for a client, and realized that the most important service I could offer was not a beautiful and soothing space that reflected their ethos, but cleaner processes within a reorganized use of space that would make working as a volunteer more approachable, less complicated, more joyful.
I love metaphors. For me, they add texture and beauty to the ethereal nature of language that I long for in my sensory experience of the world. And they can be incredible teachers. One of my favorite metaphor-using teachers points out, “We’re not trying to understand the metaphor. We’re using the metaphor, which we understand, to understand reality.” The metaphor opens the door to deeper thought, invites us to explore beyond the cursory glance of intellectual understanding, to find knowledge that we feel in our bones and radiate from our hearts.
So, as the owner of a niche business that can be hard to explain, especially to those who have not had the experiences I address with my clients, I was delighted to find how apt the metaphor of eclosion is to Cocoon’s ethos and process.
Here’s what happens during eclosion:
- Hormone release: Hormones are released to soften the chrysalis, allowing the butterfly to push through with its legs.
- Emerging: The butterfly emerges from the chrysalis and hangs upside down.
- Wing expansion: The butterfly uses gravity and wing movement to pump fluid from its abdomen into its wings, causing them to expand.
- Drying: The butterfly hangs and dries before taking flight.
So, how does that relate to executive function coaching and interior design… and how do those even fit together?
Our experience of life boils down to an interplay between our thoughts, feelings, actions, and sensory inputs. We take in information, process it, interpret it, and do something… or not. We live in the busiest, most information-filled era in history. There’s a lot to take in, and it’s not the type of information we’re set up for, biologically speaking, which produces anxiety, anger, exhaustion — stress. There’s so much for our eyes and our ears and our heads. But we’re built to move and interpret subtlety… to use our whole beings. Lots of smart writers and researchers have pointed out modern problems that have been normalized as a result.
And for some people, the space between a peaceful baseline of inputs and normal life is much wider. It’s like everything is turned up to 11… Or 20! And maybe turning it up to 11 seems like a good idea, something to drown out the other discordant noise of life. But, if you’ll forgive my mixing of movie metaphors here, it’s like when Marty McFly turned the bass up too far in his solo jam at Doc Brown’s. It blew up.
And in the loud rock-n-roll of daily life, our inner world of thoughts and feelings can be hard to direct with so much going on. We habitually have too many tabs open on our human browsers. Try to do something that requires some power, like planning a busy day or composing a coherent document, and our systems crash or get stuck spinning in circles. You know that circle. The one on the computer isn’t any different than the one you’re running around in when you’re stressed and overloaded. Nothing good or useful is going to happen without a hard reboot.
Back to butterflies.
Caterpillars can be pretty cool, but by and large, they’re pretty bloated and awkward creatures. Not exactly nimble. They aren’t known for breathtaking beauty and they sure don’t fly… yet. If Eric Carle’s story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar holds any truth, they take a lot in, then have to hole up away from the rest of the world for a while to do something with all that food they’ve taken in. But if they get to hole up long enough…
- Internal messages tell them that they’ve done the work they need to do. They are beautiful and ready. They soften the walls that separate them from everyone else, and open to the outside once more.
- They come out. They shift from internal listening to external and integrate into the outer world.
- They expand, pulling resources from their center outward, revealing the beauty they’ve been building within.
- They prepare, allowing their newly formed wings to dry, to be fully ready, before they take flight.
When our worlds are too much, we very much need a way to cocoon well. Not just a process of hiding or checking out, but of integrating, absorbing the good and discarding the unhelpful. We need a place of safety to do this, a place that nurtures us so that we can turn all the chunks of the outer world we’ve been munching on into something useful. We need to listen to our internal messages that tell us when it’s time to go in, what to do with everything we’ve gathered, and when it’s time to come out. And as we survey the scene we’ve emerged to, we need to use that information to pull the best parts of ourselves out, and share them meaningfully. This takes both established processes and responsiveness to the now. And when all these preparations are in place, when we’re strong and stable, we fly.
So, in this metaphor, Cocoon is both the noun, the place, and the verb of going inward and emerging well. With sensory design, we build the place to nurture your individual needs. Executive function coaching is the process of learning to do both the metamorphosis within and the emerging to offer our best, our most beautiful selves.
And we take flight.
— AH