Our striving for joy, contentment and happiness can in reality seem like a fuzzy dream.
A caterpillar crawling along a
leaf one day, looked up and saw a beautiful butterfly passing overhead and wondered: 'I would love to be like her; is
it possible, could this happen to me someday?'
Now in adulting we know that the cost is high and the means complex for the
caterpillar’s dream to become a reality. The transformation from caterpillar to
chrysalis to butterfly is a perfect metaphor for what we may experience in life.
An interesting fact to begin: In ancient Greece the word for
soul or psyche was often described as a butterfly.
And so…Once upon a time……
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 force its body through that little hole.
And then …..it seemed to stop making any
progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no
farther.
O No! The man decided to ‘help’ the butterfly, so he took a pair of
scissors and snipped open the remainder of the closed cocoon. The butterfly could now emerge ever so easily.
But …the poor butterfly had a swollen body and small,
shrivelled wings instead of a lithe body and full beautiful wings.
The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected
that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support
the body, which would shrink in time.
Neither happened!
In fact, the poor butterfly spent the rest
of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shrivelled wings.
It never was able to fly. What a sad story.
What went wrong?
What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required
for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening, was the way of forcing fluid
from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for
flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
The butterfly is created
in this way, he is made perfect through his struggle; his struggle has purpose
and reason.
During the transformation of the caterpillar into the
butterfly, the caterpillar’s skin is incapable of stretching, so it has to
accommodate its expanding self by shedding or moulting its skin. In the same
way there are things in life that we have to leave behind in order to develop. There are relationships to shed and bad habits, addictions and
bad behaviour to overcome. There are skills to learn along the way.
Struggles are exactly what we need in
our lives!
If we go through life without any difficulties, we too would be
weak, self absorbed and emotionally crippled. We would miss out on so much good. You cannot see our wonderful world when you are crawling on your belly! We are created to experience new things, to love and to reach out and
serve others.
Our transformation
often starts with dissatisfaction. Eternity is set into the human heart and we therefore feel uncomfortable, irritated, frustrated and sad when we are immature. There may be a desperation to find meaning, passion, and purpose in our
lives. The onset of this transformation often comes to us as a search within loss.
We can experience divorce, job loss, the death of a parent
or financial issues. Life as we have known it changes and we find ourselves between who
we were and who we are becoming.
Most of us hate change. We hate the unknown. We
like to be in charge and in control of things and therefore look for the easy
route, a distraction or a way of anaesthetising the pain.
We can learn from our
story above, an easy escape often leaves us crippled in life.
We need to embrace struggles, walk
through our grief and heal well from trauma so that we mature. The results of those painful, hurting moments can produce growth and new life.
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