The Story of the Butterfly
Out for a morning stroll, a man observed a butterfly struggling to free itself from the cocoon that seemed almost to be holding it prisoner. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole. Then it stopped, as if it couldn’t go further.
The man, no longer able to watch the tiny creature struggle, decided to help it out of the cocoon. He broke away the remaining bits of the cocoon so the butterfly could emerge easily. As the butterfly emerged the man noticed it had a swollen body and shriveled wings. He continued to watch it, expecting that at any minute the wings would enlarge and expand enough to support the butterfly’s body but that didn’t happen. In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its short life crawling around on the ground. It was never able to fly.
What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required by the butterfly to get through the opening was a way of forcing the fluid from the body into the wings so that it would be ready for flight once that was achieved.
If we didn’t have difficulties, we would not grow and become all we were meant to be. We would live relatively uneventful lives and when our allotted time on this earth was finished, we’d just wither and die, having accomplished nothing more than having taken up space on the planet.
Fly high, butterfly! Soar high above the fray!
Tags: difficulties, growth, struggles