Cocoon

I'm not very good at getting out of bed in the morning.

It was easier for me when I was in college. I was forced out from under my covers by the need to get to class at 7 a.m. every morning. I had somewhere to be. But now, I rarely need to be anywhere until the afternoon, so it's much more difficult to build up the gumption go crawl out of my bed and begin my day. When my alarm goes off, I think, "Oh, I can lay here for another ten minutes...I don't have anywhere to be." And then I'll add another ten minutes, and then another, and before I know it, I've been laying there for an hour longer than I had originally meant to, and my day has already become much less productive than it would have otherwise been.

The problem is that my bed is just so nice and warm in the morning. The world outside of my bed isn't. It's cold. It's can be kind of scary. People give me the stink-eye. But while I'm laying in bed, all is well, and it takes a lot of arguing with myself inside my head to eventually evict myself from my mattress.

In that moment each morning when I'm snuggled up in my nest, debating whether or not to begin my day, it feels like I'm in my own little cocoon. When it's time for a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it builds a cocoon around itself to protect it and to take up the task of metamorphosis. It must feel nice in those cocoons. I bet they're warm.

But a caterpillar isn't meant to stay in the cocoon. It's meant to break out with butterflies' wings and go soaring through the air. It needs to get out of the comfort it enjoyed in order to live the life for which it was made. After all, everyone likes butterflies more than they like caterpillars. No one goes to a "caterpillar garden" to look at a bunch of caterpillars crawling around. But they do go to butterfly gardens so that they can see the colors and the beauty of creatures that have left behind the warmth of the cocoon in order to fly.

Some people are great at living like butterflies. They're always looking for the next challenge or for a new environment. They have no problem leaving the comfort and safety of what they already know in order to experience something fresh and exciting. But then there are people like me. I'm a caterpillar, and a hesitant one at that. I don't like to get out of bed in order to begin the day's business. I don't like to leave my cocoon in order to fly. I don't like to step out of what is familiar to me in order to grow.

And yet, I recognize that doing such things is necessary to a successful life. While routine and rhythm aren't bad things, they can easily turn into stagnation, and a stagnant life isn't an very interesting or productive one. So I'll work on hitting my snooze button a little less, and you find out what you need to do to break out of your cocoon.

If that doesn't work, I'll start drawing up plans for that caterpillar garden.