A Man and A Butterfly

We'll start with a little question. When you come across a person at home, you child or spouse or parents in a difficult situation or a colleague at work struggling with a personal or a work dilemma - what's your first instinct?

Do you rush to help them out of the love for them and kindness in your heart? Or shun them completely, cos everyone needs to deal with their own problems? Or somewhere, in between? Is there a right thing to do or each situation calls from it's own unique approach?

In our story today, we have a little butterfly friend in a tough spot, let's see what happens.

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly.

One day a small opening appeared.

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.

So the man decided to help the butterfly.

He took a pair of scissors and

snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon.

The butterfly emerged easily but

it had a swollen body and shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch it,

expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge

and expand enough to support the body,

Neither happened!

In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around.

It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand:

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.

There’s often a certain level of discomfort in growth. Stretching out of your comfort zone can feel uneasy and even terrifying and it’s easy to retreat back into our safe little cocoon. 

But it’s often in our times of struggle that we have the most growth. It gives us strength and molds us into the person we’ll become.

So the next time you have an opportunity to help someone get out of a tight spot - stop to think if they'd be better off if you taught them to fish instead.

Credits for the Story "A Man and A Butterfly" - Author Unknown