Butterflies, Transformation & Death: What The Stoics Wanted To Know

The bright side of transformation often makes us think of butterflies – the becoming, the vivid growth, the ability to fly to new heights with a new perspective. But the truth is that in order for us to become, we must first die. Die to ego, die to false identities, and die to what was so that what can be is possible.

The stoics gifted us the phrase: memento mori - in Latin meaning: you must die. Perhaps one of the most painful deaths in our lives is the death of a dream. Whenever we had imagined how the story would play out for us, we suddenly found ourselves needing to surrender that a good dream for the great is possible, if we will only lay the prior expectation down.

When walking through one of those seasons in 2017, a friend gave me a book of liturgies called Every Moment Holy by Douglas Kaine McKelvey and dog eared the page of this liturgy for The Death of a Dream. I honestly didn’t even have language for what I was feeling at that time, but these words became one only ones that expressed my soul to myself.

Whatever you’re walking through. If you’ve ever had a moment where you knew it was time to lay something down, to surrender it, I hope this encourages you. And if you’re yearning for transformation in your life, remember that the way toward rebirth is necessarily through death. And that proximity to death gives us perspective, meaning, and true life.