The Frequency

The Monarch in Between

The First Butterfly

The other day, when I was driving, I saw a monarch butterfly.

It came across my windshield so quickly that I thought I might have hit it.

I felt bad about it.

The butterfly was doing its thing, minding its own business, just doing what butterflies do.

Not because I had done anything intentionally, but because I don't see as many monarchs as I remember seeing when I was younger. There's something about them that makes you stop and notice. They're beautiful, delicate, and somehow seem almost too fragile for the world they have to travel through.

I brushed it off.

Look at me, a guy getting all deep about a butterfly.

Then There Was Another One

Then, hours later, I was driving home.

And there was another one.

A monarch.

I don't know if I believe in signs. Maybe I don't need to decide whether this was one.

But it caught my attention.

And sometimes that's enough.

I had seen one in the morning and wondered if I had hurt it.

Now, on my way home, another one had crossed my path.

That was enough to make me stop and think about it.

The Journey

September is when monarchs begin their great migration south.

That little butterfly I saw isn't just flying around the neighborhood. It's part of a journey that can carry it thousands of miles.

Think about that for a moment.

Something that weighs almost nothing can travel that far.

And it doesn't know what the entire journey looks like.

It just keeps going.

There is something strangely familiar about that.

We spend an awful lot of our lives wanting to know where we're going before we're willing to take the next step.

We want the plan.

The destination.

The five-year roadmap.

We want to know that the decision we're making today will make sense five years from now.

But life rarely gives us that kind of certainty.

Sometimes we just have to move.

Sometimes we have to follow that little voice inside us that says, this way.

And sometimes we have to trust ourselves enough to change.

Becoming Something Different

That's probably one of the reasons the butterfly has always been such a powerful symbol of transformation.

The butterfly doesn't simply become a slightly better version of what it was.

It becomes something entirely different.

And yet, it is still itself.

I think people sometimes forget that we're allowed to do that too.

We're allowed to change our minds.

We're allowed to change careers.

We're allowed to start over.

We're allowed to discover that the person we were five years ago isn't the person we need to be today.

We're allowed to transform.

That doesn't mean the transformation is easy.

Fragile Doesn't Mean Weak

The monarch's journey certainly isn't.

It's delicate. It's vulnerable. It faces weather, predators, habitat loss, and an incredibly long migration.

And yet it goes.

Perseverance doesn't always look like strength.

Sometimes perseverance looks incredibly fragile.

Sometimes it looks like a butterfly.

And that thought has stayed with me.

Because monarch populations have declined dramatically, and I hope future generations get to experience these migrations the way we do now.

I hope that's never the case.

I hope years from now, someone is still driving down a Pennsylvania road in September and sees a flash of orange and black cross their windshield.

I hope they look up.

I hope they wonder where it's going.

I hope they think about the incredible journey something so small is making.

And maybe, just for a moment, they think about their own.

Microscopic view of monarch wing scales and veins.

The Moments Between

Because that's the thing about life.

We're usually so focused on where we're going that we forget to notice the things we pass along the way.

The monarch reminded me that there are lessons hiding in those moments between things.

Between home and work.

Between one chapter and another.

Between who we were and who we're becoming.

Maybe we don't always need to know exactly where we're going.

Maybe sometimes we just need to keep moving.

And maybe we should give ourselves permission to become something new along the way.

What I Took From It

So I'll probably remember those two monarchs for a while.

The first one made me wonder if I had hurt it.

The second one made me wonder what it was trying to teach me.

Maybe neither one was a coincidence.

Or maybe they were.

Either way, I'm glad I noticed.

Because there's an awful lot we can learn when we slow down long enough to notice something small.

Even something as small as a monarch butterfly.

Author’s Note

Doug Fessler is a technology coordinator, IT consultant, and technology educator based in Pennsylvania. Through his work with organizations, schools, and community programs, he works at the intersection of technology, education, people, and the systems that connect them.

Doug writes The Frequency to explore the intersection of technology, people, communities, leadership, and the world we are building around them. His goal isn't to tell readers what to think, but to ask better questions, challenge assumptions, and look at familiar things from a different perspective.

Sometimes that means exploring technology and artificial intelligence. Sometimes it means looking at leadership, human behavior, systems thinking, or an ordinary experience that turns out to have something larger hiding underneath it.

This article was written by Douglas E. Fessler. AI-assisted tools were used to help structure and clarify ideas during the writing process. The experiences, observations, interpretations, and perspectives expressed in this article are the author's own.

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