How we view the world reflects who we are, so that two individuals witnessing the same event or reading the same text may have completely different understandings of it. That one is always evolving means what one hears, sees, and reads is always evolving too. At different stages of life, we are moved by different mediums. But sometimes, we may come across something so profound that our understanding of it matures along with us over time.
Many years ago, I read a quote by Zhuangzi that has stayed with me since, “I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” At the time, I had just graduated college and the passage struck a chord with me, as it instilled the same ideas and questions that I had for myself. Was I the butterfly living the dream or the man living my reality? If I were the man, how would I transform into a butterfly? What was my definition of a butterfly? And what were my dreams and ambitions? With little to my name and bank account, I was a young woman walking barefoot in a vast sea, not of opportunities, but of uncertainties. The world was not at my feet; I had to find my own current with who I was as a person and what I had within myself. But who was I?
Many years later, I would come back to this passage with a different point of view. I saw the separation between dream and reality irrelevant if one was not conscious of it. Whether I was the butterfly or the man, whether I was living in a dream or reality, my thoughts and feelings existed in both realms. It was what I had to say about love: “Sometimes I’m not even certain whether I am awake thinking about you, or that I am dreaming about you. Zhuangzi said, ‘I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.’ But it makes no difference to me, for the mind experiences the same emotions regardless. In my dreams, I get to be with you, make love to you. Then I wake up more blissful, less heavy from yearning for you. Sometimes I wonder if it’d still help if I were not hopeful that I’d see you one day. Hope – that I have, with you.” Hope and faith were everything, and it mattered not whether I could find it in my dream or my reality.
Yet later on, I would again read this passage in a different light. I saw the dream as a blackhole, where everything went into oblivion, and what came out belonged to another universe, oblivious to what was within. Whether I was the butterfly or the man, whether I was living in a dream or reality, was irrelevant because of their detachment from each other.
“My head’s sliced in half
like two puddles of black tar
swirling like quicksand
sucking every dream
into oblivion.
‘Til every voice convenes
like the singular tip
of the pyramid pushing
everything rushing
back to me.
Whether I was a man
dreaming I was a butterfly,
Whether I am a butterfly
dreaming I am a man
matters not.
Neither of us will ever know
the worlds between.”
When another world is completely detached from ours, when we’re not conscious of it, does it matter that it exists at all? “When a tree falls in a lonely forest, and no animal is nearby to hear it, does it make a sound?” is a philosophical question weighing upon science since some time. It was what Einstein asked Bohr, highlighting the disagreement between classical and quantum physics: “Do you really believe that the moon only exists if you look at it?” Because, existence in the absence of an observer is at best a conjecture.
After all, the butterfly is a fascinating creature, not only in East Asian literature, but in the West as well. The word butterfly in Greek is Psyche, which also means the soul. In Greek mythology, Psyche was born a mortal woman and given multiple trials in order to be with her beloved, Cupid. So striking and beautiful is the butterfly to depict the immortality of the soul, evolving from its groveling caterpillar existence into brilliant wings to flutter in the blaze of day.
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