The Butterfly

One day a child found a cocoon of a butterfly. He watched it each day until finally a small opening appeared.   Fascinated by what was about to happen, the boy sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It looked like it had gone as as far as it could go.

The boy decided to help the butterfly, so he ran home and got a pair of scissors, ran back and carefully snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.

The boy continued to watch the butterfly with anticipation.  He expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, and that the body would contract to its normal size. But neither of those things happened! Instead, the the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It was never able to fly.

In his haste to help the butterfly, what the boy didn't understand was how natured worked.  The restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were nature's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it was free from the cocoon.

The lesson for us is that sometimes, struggles are what we need in life to help us grow. If we went through life wihtout obstacles, we would not be as strong as what we could have been.

And we could never fly...