The Truth About Cocoons

What caterpillars really go through in there has applications for our moment.

What is it actually like inside a cocoon? Is it cozy and peaceful? Or cramped and dim? Is the bug’s stay voluntary, involuntary or something in between? And what really happens during that seemingly magical change? Is it inspiring and wondrous? Or is it unpleasant and grim? What did I not learn in kindergarten?

In this post, I’m departing from novels to focus on Sam Anderson’s wonderful article in The New York Times Magazine, May 24, 2020 “The Truth About Cocoons” He used Eric Carle’s beloved childhood story The Very Hungry Caterpillar to compare our collective experience during Covid quarantine to a caterpillar’s experience in a cocoon. Perhaps, he suggests, our image of the caterpillar, having a cozy transformation, secure in his self-made protection is a bit short on reality. With a bit of science, he reminds us that what the caterpillar is doing in there is, basically, digesting itself. Ewww.

So, Anderson informs us, we needn’t be surprised if our potential, collective transformation is not the cozy experience we expect it could be. Maybe it’s not just sitting by the fire or on the patio sipping wine and reading a nice novel while we wait for the world to be safe again. Perhaps those expectations as well, come up a bit short on reality. He says:

Watching it all happen, all over the planet, has been horrible. There is no other word for it. It has been horrible inside overrun hospitals - the multiplying hopelessness, the gasping of those who can’t be saved. It has been differently horrible inside our own houses, where we wonder how to help as we refresh internet spreadsheets and watch the numbers rise: cases, tests, deaths. It has been horrible to read about the stories behind those numbers, It has been horrible to watch for tiny signs of illness in the people we love the most. Horrible to feel our own foreheads, wondering if we are warm. Horrible to be warm. Horrible to be cool. Horrible to not be sure.

Anderson voices for me these fears, daily fears, fears of not only personal suffering, but global suffering. He helps me better understand my place in this strange liminal space which precedes transformation. This possibility of annihilation. But then he leads me to another possibility; the potential for transformation. The time, he says, when we nibble our way through this self-imposed cocoon, and make a hole to look out of, and find the courage to step into the new world awaiting.