Dragonflies

Dragonflies are pretty nifty. The spend the first part of their lives swimming underwater. They're pretty vicious predators too. They'll eat mosquito larva, baby fish and sometimes even tadpoles.
When they get to be bigger larva, they're kinda ugly/scary looking. They're brownish gray in color, have these long, skinny arms, big googly eyes and what looks like a pincher on their tail. They're certainly not anything with which I'd like to do battle.

Then, when they're old enough, they pull themselves out of the water onto a rock, branch or other sturdy thing, and they shed their ugly, scary, brown-gray bodies to reveal an amazingly beautiful creature. They're usually green, blue or other bright colors. But even the "plain" brown ones have an amazing daring, yet graceful beauty to them. It's amazing to think that something that started out so plain, so rough can turn into something so different.

But at the same time, you have to wonder: does it hurt when the dragonfly is shedding it's skin? How hard must it be to crack your shell open wide and pull yourself out of it? Just think about how hard it is to get out of a wetsuit, and then multiply that by a thousand.
Also, once the dragonfly leaves it's underwater life, it can't go back. It trades the water currents for air currents. Both of which are amazing, but both are very different lives.

I was lucky enough the other day to see a dragonfly as it was emerging from it's shell of an old life. I watched as it sat on the rock and dried it's wings. It was a pretty surreal picture to see the beautiful green dragonfly with glistening wings sitting on the empty shell of the "ugly" creature that it had just previously been.

Then I started thinking of myself. I've been having a really hard time of things lately, and I just haven't been able to make them anything but worse. I went down to the river, actually, to clear my mind; to let the currents wash away all of the bad. And that's when I saw it, and that's when it hit me.

No, change isn't ever easy. Change doesn't always happen intentionally. It sometimes is just a process which you go through, and you don't know how or why, and while it seems destructive, it's all a part of the growth process. Do you really think that the dragonfly larva knows why it's crawling out of the water, cracking it's skin open and crawling out of it? No. It just knows that something inside of it says, "Do this..." and it acts without thinking. It just does.
Anyway, I know that I was placed at the right place at the right time. This transformation of the dragonfly is something which I was meant to see. It was much like my life at the moment. It was hard and full of chaos, but when I finally emerge, people won't see me as the same person that I was before. I'll trade my old ways for new ways (water for wind). The new roads ahead of me will be will sometimes be dangerous (as were the old ones), and I'll find new foe, but I'll be safe(er) from the old ones, but they'll be amazing and exciting nonetheless.
Once my wings dry and I take flight, I'll be an amazing sight to see.
All thanks to the growth that happens in chaos.