Hunting

Every fall when my girls were little we would go caterpillar hunting.

Sometime between the middle of August and the first week in September, the monarch butterfly caterpillars would be ready. At this late stage in their caterpillar existence all they do is eat and poop, the eating and the pooping in equally massive quantities. So it was imperative they be neither too small, requiring us to feed them for more than a few days. Or too big because they would immediately begin looking for something to super glue their back-ends onto and begin their transformation. You want a couple of days in the house before they start picking out their spot in preparation of, well, there just really aren't words to describe what they do next.

With their butt glued to almost any surface, suspended upside down, they wiggle and twist and squirm in uncomfortable spasms for hours until they shed their striped skin and reveal a milky green chrysalis with shiny gold dots.

This incredible activity happens along highways, dusty back roads, in the middle of thick green pastures and on solitary milkweed plants in vacant inner city lots with most of us taking no notice. And that's a shame because it's one of those things that leaves you wondering about possibilities, it leaves you in awe. Watching that tiny little caterpillar work so hard to become something so different and amazing makes you feel astonished and that feeling is what I think is missing with our kids.

There is no substitute for the feeling of success. Nothing comes close to working hard and being proud of your best effort. There is no drug, no amount of money that can match the feeling you get when you don't think you can do something, feel like quitting, know you have nothing left to give and give one ounce more and succeed. And the only way to know those feelings are through personal experience. You can read about it or hear about it and be inspired but the price of knowing it for yourself, is in the doing.

I watch the school system even the playing field so that everyone “wins. Where the hell else in life does that happen? I watch helicopter mom's (yes I was one for a while...but I got better) rob their kids of opportunities to fall and get back up again, their every helpful message screaming, “I think you're incompetent”.

When I worked for Colgate one of our program directors in Philadelphia told me that they were having a hard time motivating the inner city kids. She said, “How do you interest a child in working hard when they can stand on a street corner and look out for cops for the dealers and earn $400?” It always bothered me because I didn't have an answer. I do now.

I'd give that kid a monarch butterfly caterpillar. I'd watch the amazement on his face as it struggled and changed. I see his eyes light up with understanding as that milky green chrysalis became clearer and clearer until it revealed the black and orange and white butterfly inside. Like magic. And together we would watch it break open and work to stretch it's wings and fly away knowing, that from that day on he would always wonder about his own possibilities.