Personal Growth

Learning Like a Butterfly’s Evolution

How returning to school in midlife compounds 50 years of lessons into something lighter and freer

Learning is like the stages of metamorphosis. (Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash)

Have you spent years building a career but still feel stuck, burned out, or quietly longing for a more authentic path? I used to be one of those people.

My journey taught me that the knowledge and struggles of our earlier years don’t disappear; they compound into something lighter and freer. While your path will look different from mine, I hope sharing my story helps inspire your own evolution.

I am sitting in a physical classroom again, surrounded by lecture notes, classmates and teachers. I am not 20, and I am not looking for an opportunity to climb another career ladder.

At over 50, studying arboriculture is completely outside my original life plan. It simply happened in the flow of my life, built on the lessons and fascinating realizations of all these years. I realize now that I learn like a butterfly’s evolution: moving through the egg, the caterpillar and cocoon, and finally emerging as the butterfly. My learning has continuously compounded every time I moved to the next stage.

The Egg: Childhood and University

Like the egg of a butterfly, I didn’t know what my future and the world looked like back then. I just absorbed different basic nutrients to grow.

The egg stage: Silently absorbing foundational nutrients, completely unaware of the journey ahead. (Photo by Nativeplants garden via Wikimedia Commons)

Studying so many subjects during childhood and university was like an egg absorbing nutrients. Some of them are essential, requiring a deep intake, while others were merely supplements. Languages, basic math, a few simple economic and marketing concepts, and foundational ethical values were my essential nutrients. At the time, I didn’t realize, but these were the exact tools being equipped within me for my future growth.

These tools helped me to crawl through and survive the competitive corporate jungle when I became the “caterpillar”. Ultimately, they are the tools now giving me the wings to fly freely and explore a new world in my current midlife stage.

The Caterpillar and Cocoon: My Working Life

As a “caterpillar”, I clawed through the marketing sector in the corporate jungle. Using my language skills from my egg stage, I managed to communicate with different stakeholders from around the world. I ran businesses using my basic economics concepts and math, and I tried to manage people using my core ethical values.

The competitive jungle: Crawling alongside others on the corporate leaves. (Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash)

Like a caterpillar, my main food was leaves, the practical knowledge. Gathering marketing insights, mastering the health and beauty industry, and learning how to run a business turned out to build an “ideal” career for me.

But in the corporate jungle, your favorite food is not always waiting for you. To survive, I was forced to eat things that did not suit my appetite at all: the heavy stems and tough wood. The political calculations between colleagues, the pressure from business targets and deadlines, the extreme fast pace, and the crazy, long working hours, I had to swallow them all if I wanted to survive.

Although these foods tasted terrible and made my “stomach” feel sick, they ultimately played an important role in preparing me for the cocoon. The chronic stress and anxiety eventually broke down my health, forcing me to slow down.

A necessary stop: Finding a quiet, hidden space to begin the breakdown and rebuild. (Photo by Walter del Aguila on Unsplash)

I rested myself inside a cocoon, a space to live slowly, rest and deeply rethink my life. Who am I, really? What do I really want? What is best for me?

Inside that quiet cocoon, I learned a lot about myself. I realized I had been blindly following others’ paths, climbing a big, tall tree to look for more leaves. But the higher I climbed, the stronger the wind and the heavier the rain became, nearly dragging me down. I finally realized that I am simply not a person suited for the corporate business world. I didn’t need a mountain of leaves to live.

This was where my learning began to compound. The tools from the egg stage, mixed with the brutal self-knowledge gained from the caterpillar stage, finally added up to a clear realization: what I truly needed, and what was best for me, was to be my authentic self, to fly freely across the beautiful jungle.

The Butterfly: My Midlife Learning

With all the learning and realization from the previous two stages, I have finally evolved into a butterfly, a new me.

Sipping nectar on my own terms: The freedom of the butterfly stage. (Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash)

I am lighter now, and I have wings. Today, I intentionally explore new things that are purely solitary pursuits: writing, reading, piano, and stock investing. I am just like a butterfly flying freely from flower to flower to sip nectar. I don’t need to sip a lot, just enough for a free, happy and healthy life. I no longer claw slowly or compete with other caterpillars for the leaves.

Although I look different now, my core hasn’t changed. I still love nature. I still love trees. I am grateful for what trees and plants contribute to humanity. I want to learn more about them and give back to nature.

That’s why I am sitting in the classroom today, learning arboriculture. I am not sure if I will get a job in arboriculture. And I know I will make far less money compared to my previous corporate jobs. But I also know I work much better with trees than with human politics.

My learning compounds, and so does my happiness.