On my short 1-hour lunch break I ran into my favorite bookstore and read"The Very Hungry Caterpillar "by Eric Carle. Though it was a short (very short) children's classic,I enjoyed reading it ...
The story is simple: the caterpillar is born, eats too much — far too much — learns to eat less, has a snooze, and changes into a butterfly.
But of course, there's far more to it than that. Carle's Hungry Caterpillar is an iconic figure whose journey from egg to butterfly is a metaphor for human development and progress, offering profound insights into the human condition.
As a thinker, he is second only to that great Greek philosopher, Aristotle, who first proposed that rational thought advances through thesis and antithesis — in other words, you eat a lot, and then you feel awful, so you stop eating. What could be more rational than that?

We will only find happiness, said Aristotle, if we can find the middle path between excess and deficiency. Isn't there a lesson for us all in that, in these times of hyper-consumption that are threatening the very existence of our planet? The Hungry Caterpillar knew when to stop — do we?