So Worldly

My daughter has a book called, "Caterpillar Hides Away." I love this book. It's not the same as Eric Carle's, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," which has few words woven into beautiful illustrations and pictures of food with holes punched through. This book is meant to teach color. Apparently, it's also an early lesson about envy. The caterpillar feels sad because she is, "...only dull and green," while everything else around her is vividly colored pink and red, blue and yellow.

Unfortunately, my daughter has developed a pretty keen sense of empathy and when she sees how caterpillar is depressed, she frowns and repeatedly says, "Oh no! Caterpillar's sad!" Sometimes she gets so upset that the whole story is derailed.

Here's the sick part. Every time this little exchange happens, I want to laugh hysterically. Sometimes I am choking on my own words of consolation as little snorts of laughter creep out. You probably think it's because she is so cute. That's true. But the rest of the ugly truth is probably that we (I) have become so jaded and cynical that it seems ridiculous to care about Caterpillar's piddly issues. We know that nobody cares if you're dull and green and you'll always want to be golden as the sun. Unlike real life, at the end of this story Caterpillar wakes up as a multi-colored butterfly and makes quite a stir.

That's what we all want, isn't it? A chance to shine, to get a little recognition, adoration, whatever. Your own children are probably the only people in the world who will ever really look at you with gleaming, hopeful eyes, waiting for you to be the hero. But that's too commonplace. We want fame, we want strangers to adore us and other people's children to talk about how cool we are on the schoolyard. Ain't it grand?