By Debbie Olujobi

The evolution of caterpillar to butterfly is the transformation of a creature from ugly to beautiful; from obscure to outstanding and it is a process quite a few of us humans can relate to.

In my mind I see the childhood years as the Lavar to caterpillar years. The time when we learn to crawl and walk; learning about the world around us and being innocent of the intricacies of it. Fear is the most debilitating disability of the human experience but it is a fruit of wisdom when used as a gauge.

I call it the human experience as I believe us all to be souls just having a human experience. Fear like AIDS is a disease we acquire; while the latter we get from choices we make the former creeps in on us and it cripples us emotionally, spiritually and eventually physically.

Fear in most of us is the limitating factor from butterfly back to caterpillar. It’s a balancing act to fly yet stay grounded but without fear we are ignorant of consequences and happenstances that can change our life’s landscape unexpectedly. Sadly that fact is lost on most butterflies or should I say youths.

My analogy is simple we start out as lava that are lowest in the food chain; become caterpillars, learning to crawl and moving very slowly; we feel insignificant and unattractive; we can’t make our own decisions and we wait for the day when we get our wings; become butterflies, painted in beautiful colours. When you are young it seems adulthood is emancipation from authority and mediocrity.

Every child has an idea that they can run their own lives better than their parents; parents are old fashioned and never understand anything. A young adult is actually the most emancipated of all people; almost fearless. They are at the dawn of what they perceive to be a new life of freedom, the right to make their own choices.

I have been there and I know how exciting it is to be given the free rein to run one’s life. I remember the exhilaration of deciding to go out late without the normal 2 week notice and begging period or even curfew. Higher education means being away from home and is the place for spreading ones wings and experimentation. It’s the rehearsal before life really begins.

I am reminded of the butterfly years by my friend’s daughter who turned 18 this past week. She is beautiful, brilliant but precocious! She is the new butterfly determined to go flying for the sake of flying and she worries her mother no end. Just like us so many years ago; she feels invincible.

In her mind her mom doesn’t understand or appreciate her and I am reminded of myself at her age; the teenage angst never really changes; same script but different cast!!  I have the dubious honour of being the cool aunt to a lot of youngsters and they listen to me. I can relate to them because I haven’t shoved my past into amnesia or rewrite history to read that I was a perfect child who always came first in her class.

I was a troubled teenager and I did deserve the title my late uncle gave me; he said I was the rebel without a cause; rebelling for the sake of rebelling! I am hardly ever shocked by what the young generation tell me; I live by the Yoruba adage that literarily challenges adults to swear an oath and deny whether they were never rebellious or over exuberant. There is nothing new under the sun and its best to listen from a height of understanding and not judgement.

A few months ago, I had been persuaded to take the young lady under my wing because her mother was worried about her. She is very intelligent and already doing very well in the university for someone so young but she had taken to disappearing for days from the campus and she always clammed up when probed for explanations.

I didn’t relish questioning an angry teenager but I have very few friends so couldn’t refuse the request. Like I expected she wasn’t keen to pour her heart out but she was willing to hang out with me. In her words I was more on her level than the other adults so I understood. She was right, I did but it didn’t make me less worried!

You see the butterfly years can be fun but they are also the make or break years. Those are the years when you take risks because you don’t recognise that there are consequences for actions; that there is a lot of evil in the world. I didn’t judge her but I tried to discuss consequences of rape, disease, accidents; heartbreak and she gave me more information than I had on the legitimacy of fear.

She wasn’t stupid and I was relieved to find not promiscuous; she just liked to hang out with her friends and thought it was cool to do so on a whim whenever she felt like it. If there is one thing I could relate to her mother it is that she will hopefully grow out of it, after all we did.

The butterfly years are beautiful but we humans need grounding to be safe; fear is actually a safety valve that keeps us safe. There are consequences for every action we take and they may be tragic. We can’t live in fear but we can be guided by it and be informed to make wiser choices. The reality is that we all go through the butterfly years; the best those who love us can do is try to guide us and where that fails; just pray.