Maya Angelou once said, “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that although age harbors wisdom, youth is the height of beauty. A relatively new Broadway musical called Spring Awakening is being hailed as the new Rent owing to its portrayal of the exuberance (together with the struggles, angst, and self-discoveries) that is associated with being young and its being categorized as a rock musical, as its predecessor. Duncan Sheik wrote the music. Steven Sater is the lyricist.

Despite the quite grim and gloomy theme of the play, one of the final songs, The Song of Purple Summer, talks of hope:

And all shall fade
The flowers of spring
The world and all the sorrow
At the heart of everything

But still it stays
The butterfly sings
And opens purple summer
With a flutter of its wings

Apparently, “spring” here represents being a teenager, whereas “summer” represents adulthood. As everyone of us who is past that stage knows, those were hard times. Not that adulthood offers more thrills in exchange for the “wisdom” gained through experience. But there is magic to transformation -- sometimes how people change can be a real cause of surprise. Its being a good or bad surprise counts for something, too. We can never bring back the times that passed. The time will come when we’ll need to move away from its shadow and take delight in the present.

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