Aliveness is Choosing to Live in the "Caterpillar Soup"

What a guy with a Radiohead hoodie taught me about the beauty of dissolving into soup.

Cocoon of the common crow butterfly on vine, photo by Chantel Studd, licensed through Adobe Stock.

This is the second essay of a limited four-part series where I interviewed strangers on trains (or in this case, at the station). There is nothing like a captive audience!

If you are interested in the first essay, here is a link to Aliveness is a Match You Held Too Long.

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The 7:07 pulls away just as I reach the platform.

I watch those red taillights disappear around the curve, my coffee still warm in my hand, my carefully orchestrated morning now completely shot. The platform fills with the particular sound of missed opportunities: sighs, frantic phone calls, people clutching their phones like rosaries, bargaining with the god of time itself.

But there's this guy.

Mid-twenties, faded Radiohead hoodie, jeans with paint stains that look intentional but probably aren't. While the rest of us are standing there doing rapid-fire mental math about how this screws up our entire day, he's already claimed a bench like he planned this whole thing.

He pulls out a small notebook and starts sketching these intricate spirals, like he's mapping out some invisible geography the rest of us can't see.

I'm doing what we all do when reality doesn't match our agenda: recalculating, rescheduling, mentally composing the apologetic IMs I'll need to send. My jaw is doing that thing where it locks up when I'm stressed. My shoulders are migrating toward my ears.

I'm treating this missed train like a personal insult from the universe.

But he's drawing in his notebook like time just handed him a gift.

There's something about the way he sits that catches my attention. Not the careful posture of someone performing calm, but actual ease. Like every part of him is here instead of scattered across twelve different mental timelines.

When the crowd thins and the initial panic settles, he looks up from his notebook and says something that stops me mid-scroll.

"You ever notice how people change right before a train shows up? Like everyone's in their own little bubble, then suddenly we're all waiting for the same thing. For maybe three seconds, we're actually... together."

His words hit somewhere unexpected. This isn't the kind of small talk you make with strangers. Especially with stressed-out ‘ol me. This is someone who pays attention to things most people miss entirely.

But I know that feeling he's describing.

It’s that strange moment of collective awareness. And I realize I've been rushing past those moments for years, treating them like obstacles between me and wherever I think I need to be.

"Yeah," I say, because suddenly I want to know what else he notices. "I've never really thought about it like that."

The Dangerous Comfort of Rushing

"Most people hate waiting," he says, adding another curl to whatever he's drawing. "But I kind of love it. Like, this isn't the delay. This is just... life happening."

I ask him what he means.

"I don't know." His pencil pauses, mid-spiral, considering. "Like right now. You probably have somewhere you're supposed to be, right? Something scheduled after this, then something after that. But here we are, just sitting on a platform, talking about trains. When's the last time you had a conversation you didn't plan?"

The question lands heavy than it should.

When is the last time?

In my normal course of a workday…I can't remember the last unscripted conversation I've had, the last moment I didn't fill with productivity. I’m a pretty productive guy ya’ll. Even with fitting in time for myself. 🙂

"I guess I'm kind of addicted to the in-between moments," he continues. "That feeling right before you knock on a door when you don't know who's going to answer. Or when you're about to say something that might change everything. That space where anything could happen."

He looks up from his notebook, and there's something in his expression I recognize but can't name.

"My therapist says I have 'commitment issues.' But I don't think that's it. I think I'm just... allergic to things getting too settled. Everything feels dead when it's too planned out."

Dead.

The word sits between us like a stone dropped into still water.

I think about my own carefully curated life.

The color-coded calendar, the five-year plan, the way I've optimized my entire existence around efficiency and predictability. Oh, how I've often mistaken control for contentment, organization for aliveness.

But what if the restlessness I've been trying to manage isn't a problem to solve? What if it's information about what happens when life gets too small?

The Season Nobody Wants

"You know what's weird?" he says, still drawing. "Everyone talks about the butterfly, right? Like, 'look at this beautiful transformation.' But no one wants to be the caterpillar soup."

"The what?"

"Caterpillar soup. That's what happens in the cocoon. The caterpillar basically dissolves into this gross liquid before it becomes a butterfly. It's not like it just grows wings and flies away. It has to completely fall apart first."

He closes his notebook and looks at me directly.

"I think that's where I live. In the soup phase. And everyone keeps asking when I'm going to figure out what I want to be, but maybe this is what I want to be. Maybe some of us are supposed to stay liquid."

Stay liquid.

I think about my own soup phases, and how I've often experienced them as failures instead of necessary dissolutions.

The divorce that liquefied everything I thought I knew about love and partnership. How I spent months feeling like I was floating in some unrecognizable version of myself, not the married person I'd been but not yet whoever I was becoming. Friends kept asking when I'd "get back out there," when I'd feel "normal" again, as if heartbreak operated on a timeline, as if healing were a project you could complete.

The career transition that left me feeling like I was floating between identities. No longer the person with the impressive title and clear trajectory, but not yet sure what came next. How I apologized constantly for not having a better answer when people asked what I did, as if being between things was somehow shameful.

The accident that untethered me from everything familiar. The way trauma dissolves your assumptions about safety, about control, about the basic predictability of existing in a body in the world. How I spent months feeling still feel like I am swimming in some strange new reality where nothing operates according to the old rules.

How I rushed through those times, desperate to re-solidify, to feel normal and settled and done with the discomfort of not knowing who I was anymore.

But sitting here, listening to this guy talk about soup like it's a place you might want to live, I wonder: What if those weren't problems to solve? What if they were exactly where I was supposed to be?

What if the soup phase isn't something to endure but something to trust?

(It is important to note that he mentions learning this from “some artists’” show, and later I'll discover he means Lyena Strelkoff's powerful work on transformation. I’ll share more information and a link below.)

The Mythology of Arrival

We live in a culture that treats the soup phase like a medical condition to cure as quickly as possible.

Between jobs? Here's how to optimize your job search.

After a breakup? Here are seven steps to get over it.

Questioning your life choices? Here's a framework for finding your purpose.

As if uncertainty were an emergency. As if not knowing were a personal failing.

An announcement crackles through the platform: "Next train, 7:37."

"See?" he says, not getting up. "Everyone's going to start moving toward the edge now. Phones are going away. People are finishing their conversations."

And he's right. I can feel it, that subtle shift in energy, the collective pivot toward readiness.

"I love this part," he says. "Not when the train gets here. Right now. When everyone knows it's coming, but it's not here yet."

There's something about the way he says it that makes me actually feel what he's talking about. The anticipation itself, separate from what we're anticipating. It is electric. You can actually feel it.

"Everyone's always asking me what I want to do with my life," he continues. "Like there's supposed to be some final answer. Get the degree, get the job, get the house, get the retirement plan. Check, check, check, done. But what if the wanting is the point? What if the question is more alive than whatever answer I'd force myself to come up with?"

I think about all the ways I've treated my own liquid phases as problems to solve instead of states to inhabit. How I've apologized for not having everything figured out, as if uncertainty were something to be ashamed of rather than something to be curious about.

But what if being in the soup isn't a sign that something's wrong? What if it's a sign that something's finally right, that you're finally brave enough to let yourself dissolve instead of staying in a shape that doesn't fit anymore?

The 7:37 slides into the station, and we both stand up. As we board, he looks back at the empty platform.

"My friends think I'm wasting my potential or whatever. Like I should have everything figured out by now. But I think I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be."

He pauses, then grins.

"Floating around in the soup."

The Permission to Stay Unfinished

The train rocks into motion, and something has shifted in me.

Not some grand epiphany, just a small loosening around the edges of my need to have everything nailed down.

I think about the ways I've rushed toward completion, toward certainty, toward the false comfort of having figured it out. How I've treated my own soup phases like emergencies instead of invitations.

The friend who's been "figuring out her next move" for two years after leaving her corporate job, apologizing every time someone asks about her career as if being between things were a personal failure.

The colleague who's been questioning whether to have kids, tortured by the idea that she should know by now, should have decided, should be more settled in her thirties.

The way we pathologize not knowing, as if uncertainty were a character flaw instead of a completely reasonable response to the complexity of being human.

But what if some of us are meant to live in the beautiful tension of becoming? What if our restlessness isn't a bug, it's a feature?

What if the discomfort I've been trying to cure is actually the most honest thing about me? 😬

I've spent years trying to arrive somewhere, to become someone specific and definable. Trying to move from liquid to solid as quickly as possible, as if the goal were to harden into a final shape and stay there.

But maybe that's the wrong goal entirely. Maybe the point isn't to become something fixed, but to stay awake to whatever wants to emerge. Maybe aliveness requires a willingness to dissolve when the old shape no longer fits, even when everyone around you is asking when you're going to pull yourself together.

Maybe the most radical thing you can do is admit you're still cooking.

The train carries us through the city, and I sit with the strange comfort of not knowing exactly where I'm headed next.

For once, that feels like exactly the right place to be.

The butterfly is still in the soup phase. Still choosing dissolution over false stability. Still gloriously, stubbornly unfinished.

And maybe that's the most beautiful thing of all, this willingness to stay liquid, to remain open to whatever wants to emerge, even when everyone else is asking when you're going to land somewhere solid.

Maybe the most alive thing you can do is admit you don't want to arrive yet.

Maybe the soup is where you feel alive.

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If this resonates, chances are you know someone else who needs permission to stay liquid. Could you share it with them? :)

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Caterpillar Soup, by Lyena Strelkoff, is billed as “a searingly honest, irreverently funny, and irresistibly uplifting autobiographical one-woman show play sharing the transformative power of loss, and celebrating life, and love, in all of their messiness.” The link I shared is also of an interview with Lyena about the 20 years after her original debut and subsequent national tour of the play. And obviously, her concepts still inspire people today—even Radiohead wearing 20-somethings who are finding themselves in their own soup.

Coming on Thursday

If part of you is ready to stop apologizing for being in the soup and to practice staying liquid, there's more space for that this week.

On Thursday, I'll be sharing Still Becoming, a guided audio offering for paid subscribers. It's a meditative companion to this piece, part reflection, part ritual, part permission slip for those of us learning to trust the in-between.

We'll practice the radical act of not arriving, of staying long enough for whatever wants to emerge to reveal itself on its own timeline.

Throughout June, you can join for the year at 30% off—but the deeper question is: What would happen if you actually trusted the soup?

If the button doesn’t work (especially in the app), try this link: https://lifeasisee.com/af8c645f

About Alex

I’m Alex Lovell — political psychologist, yoga therapist, and writer.

Lived homeless. Been divorced. Survived a seven-car pileup with a semi. Fell in love with questions that don’t have easy answers. I’ve met a lot of thresholds. Even the one before death.

These days, I split my time between research, writing, and holding space for people figuring out who they are after everything shifted.

This Substack is where I make sense of things out loud.
I write for people in transition — between roles, beliefs, relationships, selves.
The ones quietly wondering, “What now?” but allergic to one-size-fits-all answers.

Sometimes I quote research. Sometimes I quote my own nervous system.
One speaks in data, the other in sensation. I’ve stopped choosing sides.

Free subscribers get weekly articles and insights (sometimes twice a week!). Paid subscribers get the Thursday Offerings, seasonal companion pages, post-nidra audio, and live slow sessions. Join me?

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