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August Monarch



You know all monarch butterflies look pretty much alike--same coloring, same shapes and all. They all come in closely related hues of orange and yellow and black and white. But people don't know that there are differences between the ones they see at the beginning of the spring and at the end of summer.
The spring and summer ones have delicate bodies and weak muscles, because they're born in warm climates and will spend their entire short lives fluttering around gardens and sipping nectar daintily. They will be born, grow their wings, mate, lay eggs and die. Their children will be just like them: delicate, tender butterflies meant for the garden. And the cycle continues.

But then August rolls around and everyone starts thinking about the fall, including the butterflies. The eggs that are laid late in the summer are special: they aren't like their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents. When they hatch, they are bigger, they have more stamina, and they are stronger. Their bodies are pre-prepared for their long winter migration from the mid-United States and lower Canada to Southern California and Mexico, where they can be warm during the colder months. Their bodies have to be different; their parents fluttered around gardens, while these will be making an arduous journey of thousands of miles, and racing the winter. 

They say that my generation a lot like August monarchs. I don't know about that, except that I've heard it since I was a kid and I believe it. But I can feel something in myself. 
I like it when life is good and easy and everyone is happy, but that doesn't feel like living for very long. Living doesn't feel like living for very long unless I'm fighting and sacrificing and struggling for something. I love it when things are just dandy, but until I'm showing my mettle, exercising my grit, displaying my colors--however you like to put it--life is really unfulfilling. The minute there's a war to be waged, a friend to be supported, something to be defeated, a cause to be championed... My soul wakes up and blooms. 

I was made for a struggle. I was made for a fight. I was made like an August monarch, and I'm okay with that.
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