When we were kids, we chased everything that moved. Kumbikumbi during the rains. Grasshoppers in the dry season. Dragonflies by the river. But nothing caught our attention quite like butterflies.

We’d run barefoot through the school yard or across a neighbour’s farm, yelling out whenever we saw one. “Nimeiona!” “Nimeipata!” We’d stretch our hands to catch it, gentle but greedy, just to keep it for a moment. Not to harm it, really… just to hold beauty. Even for five seconds.

At that age, I never thought of where butterflies came from.
They were just… butterflies. Always colorful. Always flying. Always free.

That changed in standard five, science class, drawing in the textbook.
Egg → Larva → Pupa → Adult Butterfly. Four stages. One insect.
I still remember how confused I was. How shocked.

“Wait, it wasn’t born beautiful?”
“You mean it crawled first?”
“That ugly itchy thing is the same as this flying beauty?”

I stared at the page longer than most. Something in me paused. Something that never left.

It starts with an egg. Small. Still. Hidden. Then comes the larva, the caterpillar. A stage that’s nothing like the butterfly. It doesn’t fly. It doesn’t shine. It crawls. It eats. It sheds. It grows. And when it touches your skin, it leaves behind rashes and itchiness. It hurts to touch. But still, that’s the same creature that will one day become something beautiful.

Then comes the pupa. That quiet stage. The one people overlook. The caterpillar disappears into a shell. No sound. No movement. No beauty. Just waiting. Just transformation. Just a fight happening in secret.

And then, finally, the adult butterfly. The one that lands on flowers. That children chase. That poets write about. That we all admire without knowing the three stages it came from.

Maybe people are like butterflies too. We see someone shining, confident, successful, full of color. We admire them. We envy them. We compare ourselves to them. We celebrate them, sometimes we hate them. But we forget: they had an egg stage. They had a larva stage. They had a pupa stage.

We never saw their crawling days, their ugly, itchy, uncomfortable seasons. We never sat with them during their silent, hidden battles when they were changing inside but had no words to explain it.
We never witnessed the people who left them, the mistakes they made, or the nights they stayed up praying or crying or trying to believe in a future that didn’t yet exist.

All we see is the butterfly. And worse, we judge ourselves against it.

Maybe next time we see someone flying, we should stop and ask ourselves: What did their larva stage look like? What were they shedding? What kind of silence did they survive? And am I judging myself too harshly because I’m still in my pupa stage?

Because we’re all somewhere in the cycle.

Some of us are eggs; still full of potential, not yet moving.
Some are larvae; messy, misunderstood, hurting others without meaning to.
Some are pupae; quiet, withdrawn, transforming slowly behind the scenes.
And some are butterflies; shining, but only for a season before the cycle begins again.

So maybe we shouldn’t rush the process. Maybe we should stop mocking our awkward stages. Maybe we should allow others the space to grow in silence. Because the butterfly is not better than the larva. It’s just… later.

And one day, even if no one claps for you, even if they didn’t see your struggle; your wings will open and you’ll fly, with colors made from every stage you survived.