About Me

I have done a lot of things in my life and have also worked in many different jobs to make a living and to experience life. This blog is just some of my musings, sometimes funny, sometimes inspirational, sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes simple but all the time, it's just me.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Butterfly

Most of us I think have read the following butterfly story in one form or the other. But just thought I would share cause I am also trying to make some point in these sort of things.

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. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it had and it could go no further.

Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled 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 contract in time.

Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.

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 were God's 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.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. And we could never fly.


I guess it does not always pay to be overly helpful and sometimes butterflies and people need to struggle to be strong.

My wife has some friends who are avid butterfly collectors, it's a huge hobby of theirs and they take holidays including to Malaysia to catch and collect butterflies.

I am more of a appreciator of butterflies in their natural form. I just love the beauty of a butterfly.

Sometimes, I wonder.

Should we let the cocoon be and struggle and become strong or do we help it in its struggle?

Do we keep and catch butterflies or set it free to flutter around in its life?

It's a bittersweet symphony, sad and happy at the same time . . . a conundrum that either way ends up bittersweet.






Take care and be well.

2 comments:

Rick Lim said...

Either way, you may not know that the man who help the butterfly is also god's will. So, fate?

Would god scarify the butterfly for the man to learn something?

Nil said...

God... hmm, what an interesting concept. Man always wills and blames God when something goes wrong. God is a concept that is difficult to proof and since I do not want to talk too much about religion, politics and other sensitive subjects to get into unnecessary debates with friends... I'll leave it as such. God's will or man's will or butterfly's will ... who is to decide?