Metamorphosis ~ Spiritual Growth through Struggle
It was a late afternoon in the parasitology lab. i was tired and just wanted to go home. We had been there for hours, in a cramped lab that smelled like body odor and swamp. Counting tiny amphipods by a meager red light was bad enough in and of itself without the fact that we weren't getting the data we'd hoped for. My supervisor, Charles, fished something out of one of the tanks. "Check it out!" he said, holding it up. A dragonfly nymph had climbed up on one of the exposed twigs. She was slowly changing shape. Her head flattened out, her eyes changed as my own watched unblinkingly. Her thorax thickened, and her abdomen thinned. Slowly, four pencil tips emerged from her back. The wings grew out, turning from cobalt to glass. Slowly, colors appeared. it was magic. What did it feel like, having dry skin for the first time? What was it like to see the world through a thousand facets? ...