What does it mean when people say you have changed?

I bumped into someone recently that I had not seen in a very long time, could have been 25 years, or a little more. In that moment that we met, there was brief hesitation of trying to place each other, trying to fit old faces onto present ones, trying to remember a name and calculate how many years had passed in between.

Then came the usual pleasantries, the laughter, hahahahah, the surprise, the quick catching up, and then, almost naturally, came the sentence: You have changed.

It was followed by another one, as though one was explaining the other: You are different.

I smiled because there was nothing really to argue with there. Of course I have changed. In truth, I think I would worry if after all these years, after all the years, I was still exactly who I was when we last met. 

The comment kept nagging me. It did not offended me, but I kept wondering what exactly people mean when they say someone has changed. Do they mean the face is older or the voice has a different tone? 

Later that day, that thought returned in an unexpected way. A butterfly passed by and for reasons I cannot fully explain, my mind went backwards, to what came before the butterfly.

Before the butterfly there was an egg, then a caterpillar, then a chrysalis.

Is this not how life works? We often speak of change as though becoming different means leaving behind what came before, as though the earlier version of ourselves no longer belongs to us. Yet nature suggests that transformation does not erase earlier stages.

The egg is important because this is where the lifecycle begins (do not get started on the chicken vs. the egg). It is small, rarely noticed, fragile even, but full of possibility. It does not yet explain what it will become, and perhaps that is part of its beauty. Not everything at the beginning needs to declare its journey.

Then comes the caterpillar, and this is a very different stage altogether. It spells constant movement, appetite, gathering, taking in what is needed for growth. It is not elegant in the way people admire elegance, but it has its purpose. It eats because growth at this stage demands it to eat. It moves close to the ground because that is where a caterpillar belongs.

It could be that many parts of our own lives are like that too. There are seasons where we are simply gathering, learning, trying, absorbing, making mistakes, saying too much, believing too quickly, growing in ways that may not look beautiful from the outside but are necessary all the same.

Then comes the chrysalis, which may be the most misunderstood stage of all because from the outside it looks like very little is happening,  yet inside, everything is happening. Structures are changing significantly.

I think many human seasons are like that too. There are years when outwardly nothing seems to change, yet internally almost everything is being rearranged. Responsibility changes how one thinks, loss changes how one listens, love softens some hearts and strengthens others, etc.

Those seasons are not always visible to the people around us. They simply notice later that something has changed, that the person they knew now speaks differently, chooses differently, responds differently to the world.

I guess that is why being told you have changed should not always sound like accusation but simply an acknowledgement that life has been happening, because if nothing changes, then nothing chages.

At the same time, change should not be confused with denial. I do not think becoming different means rejecting who one once was. I do not feel separate from earlier versions of myself. If anything, I feel more aware that they all still belong here.

The person from many years ago was real. The uncertainty, the confidence, the unfinished thinking, the earlier laughter, all of it belonged to its season. Those were not false versions but were earlier stages.

The egg still belongs to me.

The caterpillar belongs to me too.

Even the quieter seasons, the uncertain seasons, the seasons when life seemed hidden and difficult to explain, those too are part of the same story, because I do not think a  butterfly apologises for no longer crawling,  but neither does it deny that crawling once mattered.

I think we struggle because memory or encounters often freeze people in one stage. Someone remembers your laughter but has not seen what shaped your silence later. Someone remembers your confidence but not what taught you. Someone remembers your beginning and unconsciously expects it to remain exactly as they left it.

But none of us are only our beginnings.

Even in a garden, people admire the butterfly and forget how many forms came before it. Nobody stops to praise the egg. Few people admire the appetite of the caterpillar. The chrysalis looks almost forgettable, and yet without those less visible stages, there can be no butterfly.

From where my feet are, I think that not everyone who remembers you has met who you became, and not everyone who meets you now can fully understand how many stages had to pass for the current version of you.

The butterfly does not resemble its past, but its past is still there behind its beautiful colours.