A caterpillar’s journey to butterfly is a four-stage process. The culmination of that progression is beauty and elegance. These steps are natural, requiring no external intervention; thus, we know them to be real.
Reality is something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily.
Thinking we are something we are not isn’t reality.
The caterpillar goes through the following stages, egg, larvae, pupa, and butterfly. This evolution can be referred to, accurately, as a series of transitions. A caterpillar transitions from one state to another until reaching its final form.
Worms may often watch in envy as a butterfly flutters by and some may even wish that they had been born a caterpillar.
However, no worm ever said (I am anthropomorphizing), “I am a butterfly” to a passing toad, or flock of geese and expected both acknowledgement and support. No worm ever worried that a goat’s rejection of their assertion of being what they are not implied they did not exist or weren’t “seen.”
The caterpillar requires no intervention, no increase in this hormone or reduction in another to reach the state that nature will inevitably deliver. Similarly, the worm who wants to be a butterfly is also subject to the natural law that prevents it from spontaneously, or by force of will, becoming something else.
In neither case was the worm or caterpillar relegated to a lesser status, or a denial of their personal predilections, because of the genetic circumstances of their creation. This chromosomal circumstance is what makes each what it is, through no thought, decision, or preference of their own.
A worm may ultimately find itself enriching the soil or at the end of a fishhook, but it will always be a worm.
No worm becomes a butterfly because someone sews wings on its back. It doesn’t become one by wearing a sign saying, “I am a butterfly,” nor by shouting the same. It remains a worm, although clearly one with some self-identity issues.
That worm is no lesser a creature of God because it yearns to be something else.
There is no political lobby for worms demanding their “right” to become butterflies. There is no medical or social movement to ensure butterfly-aspiring earthworms reach their desired, if not radically illogical, goal.
No government is seeking to force their participation in butterfly sports and competitions or forcing peers and strangers to modify their speech when referring to the worm, I mean the trans-wormal.
Most importantly, no one is rallying and declaring that they too see a butterfly where, in fact, sits a worm.
The introduction of a false premise into the natural world results in no change. A belief in something disprovable by natural law, selection, or consequences, effects no change on the environment.
If we claim a boulder is a duck the world around us would still possess both with no visible change to either of them. Even if we were to paint the word “duck” on every rock no substantive change would occur to the fundamental properties that make up the rock. So too would it be with ducks, although it seems inherently cruel to paint them.
The only exception to the lack of observable quantifiable change due to superficial or intellectual projections is in the minds of those who believe reality is subservient to their desires and not the other way around.
The natural world has no use for the prevarications and mental gymnastics of humans who seek to reject the natural state in favor of one created and existing only within the confines of their craniums.
Worms are as consequential in the circle of life as any other organism, no matter what they would prefer to be called or become.
This is true of boys and girls as well. We would do well to remember that violating the natural law does no injury to the law, nor does it change reality.
The only harm is to those who reject it and suffer in their delusions.
Stephen Piccirillo 2025
