Today, I had an epiphany...
One of the daily questions on my Elevator app mentioned cicadas, and something about them living underground for about 17 years. At first, I breezed through it like I usually do. After all, it sounded like another poetic exaggeration disguised as nature trivia.
But curiosity is a stubborn thing. That single thought wouldn't leave me alone. So, I started digging.
And there it was. Line after line of scientific confirmation: These creatures really do spend seventeen years underground before they ever see daylight.
I sat back in genuine disbelief. Something in me shifted so abruptly, like a small detonation. It was quiet, contained, but shaking like a personal truth loose from where I'd buried it.
Cicada nymphs really do spend almost two decades underground. Working, Growing, Surviving, and Preparing. Never once seeing the sun.
And then?
When they finally emerge into the world...When they finally get their moment...They only get to live a few short weeks as mature adults before their story comes to an end. They get to live just about a month to do everything their existence has been preparing them for.
When a cicada nymph hatches, it immediately burrows underground. Not because it is weak, but because that is where its strength is meant to be built. It disappears into the temperature-controlled, nutrient-rich, and dark soil.
It grows in silence.
No applause.
No validation.
No audience.
No proof that anything meaningful is happening.
Yet it grows anyway.
They live beneath our feet, quietly feeding on the sap from tree roots, shedding skin after skin, stage after stage, becoming something stronger, something more defined, something that may be slow to reveal itself but faithful to its timing.
Then one day, after nearly two decades, the temperature of the soil changes. A message the earth whispers only once every seventeen years. It's like a biological alarm clock that can never ring too early or too late.
The nymph crawls upward.
Slowly.Stubbornly.Deliberately.
And when it reaches the surface, it does something we may find easy but is actually extraordinary: it climbs. Up a tree trunk, a fence post, a wall, anything that can hold its weight. And there, under the moonlight or a starry sky that does not even know its name, the insect splits itself open.
Literally.
It's back cracks.
Its old shell peels away.
A new body emerges, translucent, soft, and trembling.
This is its rebirth.
The wings fill.
The shell hardens.
The creature that spent nearly two decades in silence finally takes its place in the world as something unrecognizably more.
And Then… They Sing
Cicadas are famous not only for their flight, beauty, or even their short adult lives, but for their voice. A single male cicada can reach around 100 decibels, about as loud as a motorcycle.
Imagine being quiet for 17 years… then finally opening your mouth.
That's what cicadas do.
They sing wildly, unapologetically, and loudly, calling out to attract the one partner destiny kept waiting for them. Their sound is not chaos, it's purpose wrapped in resilience, patience and survival.
They do in weeks what other creatures take years to do. They live fully, intensely, and without fear of the ticking clock.
Because time isn't their enemy.
It is their guide.
For 17 years, they waited.
For six weeks, they live like they can rewrite the sky within a month, fiercely and beautifully.
The Lesson Hidden in the Soil
Everything about periodical cicadas is a contradiction:
They mature slowly but emerge suddenly.
They live quietly but announce themselves loudly.
They endure long darkness but shine in short brilliance.
Their lives whisper something most people don't want to hear:
Your timing is engineered, not accidental.
Growth isn't always visible.
Progress isn't always public.
And the season everyone sees is not the season that defines you.
Your real work, the kind that strengthens the bones of your courage, the roots of your resilience, and the scaffolding of your becoming, happens in your hidden years.
The years when you feel left behind.The years where nothing seems to move.The years that feel like punishment but are actually preparation for the loudest sound.
Cicadas remind us that emerging late is not failure.
Emerging early is not success.
Emerging when you're ready is destiny.
Many of us fear the dark seasons of our lives because we associate darkness with abandonment. But what if darkness is the workshop where your future self is being carved?
The cicada is not buried.
It is planted.
And so are you.
A Thought for the Reader
If life feels quiet right now, don't assume nothing is happening. Growth often hides underground. You may be in your seventeenth year season, unseen, unheard, and uncelebrated, but that doesn't make your journey irrelevant.
Keep putting in the work.
Wait for your soil to warm.
Your emergence is coming.
And when you rise, rise loudly.
Rise confidently and live longer than the cicada ever could.