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Welcome to Sipping Nectar
Here is the story behind the name of the blog, the hope for the space, and the formal invitation to sip alongside me.
October 9, 2022
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When a caterpillar is born and growing there is nothing they do except for consume. Sometimes they need to consume up to 20,000 times their body weight in a short span of time, and so every conscious moment of their life is spent eating and finding the next leaf to eat.
In Buddhism one of the four noble truths is the understanding that the root of all suffering is desire, and so, in this respect caterpillars are in intense suffering, chained to an endless hunger. Imagine having an insatiable hunger at all times -- it isa torturous existence, everything you eat never enough. In our world today, this is the kind of energy that is promoted and distributed by the incessant advertisements that shamelessly promotes blatant consumerism. Of course we can criticize it, and of course everyone does, but we still live in it, operate in it, and are part of that culture.
Unfortunately, it is this culture that frames most of our very existence: we live in capitalist structures and consumerist cultures, leading people to want a fast paced life, and always to be chasing the next achievement etc. This perhaps is part of human nature, but not the only part.
When the caterpillar has grown large enough it begins the process of metamorphosis. It’s typically an act that begins without much fanfare. I imagine that to suddenly stop needing to consume so much must be liberating, but this sudden transition might also be terrifying. They hang upside down and begin to squirm a bit, forming either a chrysalis or a cocoon. In any case, they form an enclosure and find themselves in stillness for the first time.
Grace Lee Boggs,a great American scholar and activist, asks us in her book The Next American Revolution to think of the question: “What time is it on the clock of the world?” and in 2020, as it seemed that we’ve reached some sort of cliff, some sort of stillness, some sort of reconsidering, I could not help but think of the chrysalis.
Inside of the chrysalis the caterpillar’s stomach explodes and releases the digestive enzyme to rearrange almost every single cell of the caterpillar’s body. In essence it digests itself. Which is to say in some ways, this process of metamorphosis is almost a complete death and rebirth, a resurrection. The time in the chrysalis ranges for each species of butterfly, a couple days to around two weeks.
Starting around2020, there was a lot of rearranging. In my own life, in the world around me, in the systems that we thought were so concrete, in this version of the world so many of us placed our trust in. It is 2022, and still, much rearranging is going on, Covid still a very real and present reality, and rearranging on the personal and systemic level sincerely needed.
The metamorphosis for the caterpillar ends in something beautiful. But perhaps the creature in its digestive phase does not know this.
Answering Grace Lee Boggs’ question “What time is it on the clock of the world?” I would respond: thechrysalis. It is the time of change, of transforming into something more beautiful, and in this phase we see glimpses, perhaps some of us can see the vision of the butterfly, the vision of the beauty, the vision of what could be.
Once the caterpillar emerges a butterfly, their world is now different. Butterflies do not need to consume for energy, for in fact, butterflies mostly use the energy stored from the caterpillar stage. Butterflies do not even have teeth, but just a long tongue called a proboscis to sip the sweetness of flowers. They also have tasters on their feet, in order to find the leaves that would be tasty for baby caterpillars, which is to say where they land they also taste. In this life, they fly; delicate and thin wings carried by the wind based on their senses, going from one bright flower to the next, tasting the beauty of the world. In this life, they are free, liberated from that hunger, and focused solely on enjoying, playing, mating, feeling, tasting. I imagine, in this life, they are free enough to Love.
The question that so haunts us in the chrysalis phase is what exactly are we transforming into? What does it look like for Covid to end? Could we possibly go back to all of that painful superficial “normal”? What does it look like for us to change, each one of us individually, and then later the system as a whole?
During 2020 already we saw so many good signs, people questioning stuff, waste, asking more about the environment, thinking more about mental health, picking up hobbies and beginning to deeply consider what they love.
I believe we are at the beginning of a real revolution, or perhaps this word is too fraught, too loaded, and what I really mean is that we are poised in an evolutionary moment, one where we will evolve to another stage together. I have faith in this completely, and in this blog hope to explore feelings related to this world, actions that represent this world, and ideas that can foster this evolution. We already see so many good people and comrades working on this new world, there are so many signs; a glimpse of a wing, the shape of an antennae, a snippet of potential inner liberation.
This blog is the small flap of a wing in the chaos that is this world. Coincidentally (or not,just aptly) named, the butterfly effect is a theory in chaos theory that believes that small things can create big changes far away, such as the flap of a butterfly’s wing can start a hurricane in another country. This is my flap, and I’m hoping for no hurricane, but perhaps some ripples.
I see a beautiful change, I see it already, all around, it’s only a matter of noticing and nourishing and being patient enough to know that it will grow. Sometimes, I even think I can see the new colors. As Arundhati Roy said in 2020, we have entered a portal, and I believe that that next world is guided by the principles of freedom, beauty, truth and love. In that world, people are free to go towards what is beautiful, to find their own truths, and the structure of the world will be so that will allow, teach, nourish, and guide us to Love.
In that next world, that one full of butterflies, we fly, float, and we sip nectar. SippingNectar is about that world, and I can’t wait to share these visions so that more of us can do so together.
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