A Tadpole with Two Legs

I think it’s officially too late to say Happy New Year, but I suspect sentiments of fresh starts, new beginnings, and big changes are still at the forefront of our collective consciousness. For that reason, I want to highlight one of the things that makes frogs so magical: their metamorphosis.

As you probably already know, the basic lifecycle of a frog goes as follows: they hatch from eggs laid in/near a body of water, they develop aquatically as tadpoles, and then, eventually, they emerge onto land as frogs. But I want to focus on what happens between those key stages, during the “then” and “eventually”.

We tend to look at growth, and life in general, through absolutes: egg, tadpole, frog. What we sometimes miss, or fail to value as much, are the in-betweens; the stages where we’re not quite there yet but we’re certainly on our way.

Notice how much change happens between image a and image e in the diagram above. These times when growth is trying to catch up with itself, while awkward and incomplete, are just as essential as the more readily identifiable ones. And, in my personal opinion, they’re even more exciting.

So much energy goes into sprouting those first two legs, and even more energy goes into developing further as a froglet. In fact, so much energy is required that some tadpoles have to wait entire seasons to metamorphose depending on their conditions and the resources available to them. Growing is hard.

As we set our intentions for the year ahead, I want to embrace being a tadpole with two legs: learning to adapt, embracing new surroundings, growing in weird ways. When those small yet significant changes take place, when our effort and energy begin to manifest as identifiable growth, that’s when we should find the magic in metamorphosis.

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Moving forward, I plan to focus on an individual species each week; if you have a favorite type of frog, let me know so I can make sure to feature them! I hope everyone has an exceptionally froggy Friday. <3