Can a caterpillar become a butterfly?

Both of us - myself and Sandhya - visit our terrace garden every morning to water the plants and collect the produce. Some flowers and some veggies. Last week, we observed some nice caterpillars stuck to the long single narrow grass-like leaves of lily in a flowerpot. They were carbon black with silver or golden dots on them. A couple days later, we observed a bunch of them grazing lavishly on these leaves. Sandhya looked worried, "Look at the pieces of leaves fallen on the floor! How greedy are these caterpillars? Will our lily plant survive?" I said," Hope so! Every year, this mid-monsoon season, this happens, but we see our lily plant intact." The tiny fat creatures were eating mindlessly, falling at times due to losing balance.
But today, when we went to terrace, we saw hardly any caterpillar! Sandhya said cheerily," Looks like most of them have grown into butterflies and gone. How beautiful!" Indeed, that must be the case.Though we could not see any butterfly, it is a given fact of the nature.

So, what's new in this short story? This is quite common, known to everyone! But I realized a new truth in this phenomenon. A caterpillar becomes a butterfly when the wings developed under its body come out and unfold - that is a physical stimulus. But, I realized that there is an attitude change also from within - that the new insect gives up happy grazing of the food in abundance around it. This is the realization that "I am satisfied with this green food now. I must leave it behind and take a flight spreading my wings." If this attitude is not there, then irrespective of getting the wings, the insect would continue to graze on those leaves forgetting what to do with the wings. For us, people, we would not see any beautiful butterfly taking haphazard flights around flowers and bushes. Mind you, all a butterfly needs as food is tiny granules of nectar in the flowers and not tonnes of vegetation spread around. So, even if it gives up the previous food, it does not die of hunger, there is another food available for it. More than food, what it gets is a total freedom from being stuck to a leaf and discover unseen, inexperienced world around it. So, that moment of attitude change is very very important for it.
What about us, humans? When will we learn from a caterpillar? Will a human caterpillar within each one of us ever become a butterfly? Think....think...
- Makarand & Sandhya