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Once I dreamed I was a butterfly — fluttering about, completely a butterfly, aware only of my existence as a butterfly, with no awareness of Zhuangzi. Then I woke, and there I was, unambiguously Zhuangzi. But I do not know: was I then a man dreaming of being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly dreaming of being a man?

This is not a riddle requiring a solution. It is an observation requiring a response. The appropriate response is lightness — the recognition that the categories we use to fix identity and distinguish real from unreal are more fragile than they appear. The butterfly did not know it was dreaming. Neither, while we are in it, do we.

Between man and butterfly there is necessarily a barrier. The crossing from one to the other is the transformation of material things. I am not troubled by this. Transformation is what everything does. The question is whether to grip the form you currently inhabit or to ride the change with the ease of a swimmer who knows that water moves.