The Butterfly

One day, a man found a cocoon of a butterfly in his small garden. He continued watching this cocoon and observed that a few days later; a small opening appeared on the surface of that cocoon. He sat there 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 could, and it could  not go any further.

The man thought that, as the butterfly was not able to get through for its future journey, on the contrary, it may just die there inside the cocoon. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a poker and made the hole of the cocoon somewhat bigger and larger, with the hope and intension of helping the small butterfly to make its way out and fly endlessly in the open sky.

Helped by his benevolent act, the butterfly then emerged out quite 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 after it came out, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support its body, which would contract in time.

But alas! Nothing of such things happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life merely crawling around with its swollen body and the shriveled wings. It was never able to fly in the open sky and visit a variety of places, plants and flowers, and from one garden to another. Its travelling / fly zones got reduced to a bare minimum, as if it had become a handicapped insect.

What the man, in his act of kindness and haste, could not understand - was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening, were in fact, God's process of forcing some necessary fluid from the body of the butterfly to pass into its wings, so that they gain the required level of strength to enable it and be capable of future flights, once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes hard work and struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. If God had allowed us to go through our lives without any of such obstacles, that would had just crippled us to face future challenges of life which a man comes across throughout its vicissitudes and vagaries of nature.

We could not become as strong and sturdy as what we could have been otherwise, has we passed through a long period of struggle and strife for our life ahead. We could never fly ! So dear friends, never be afraid of working hard, putting a lot of struggle in doing small things which enable us to learn intricacies of our web of life, and making us stronger for the bigger tasks of our life. It is just a way of the supreme artists whom we lovingly call God to help us to make us strong and wise for facing the challenges and competition of life.

R.D. Bhardwaj "Noorpuri"