Friday, July 1, 2011

The Caterpillar


THE CATERPILLAR
A biology teacher was teaching his students how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. He told the students that in the next couple of hours, the butterfly would struggle to come out of the cocoon, but no one should help the butterfly. Then he left.
Emerging Butterfly
The students were waiting and it happened. The butterfly struggled to get out of the cocoon and against the advice of the teacher, one of the students took pity on it and decided to help the butterfly out of the cocoon. He broke the cocoon to help the butterfly so it didn't have to struggle anymore. But, shortly afterwards, the butterfly died.

When the teacher returned, he was told what had happened. He explained to the students that it is a law  of nature that the struggle to come out of the cocoon actually helps develop and strengthen the butterfly's wings. By helping the butterfly, the boy had deprived the butterfly of its struggle and the butterfly died.

Apply this same principle to our lives. Nothing worthwhile in life comes without a struggle. As parents we tend to hurt the ones we love most because we don't allow them to struggle to gain strength.
A few quotations from the book 'You Can Win' by Shiv Khera:
1. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
2. You cannot enrich the poor by impoverishing the rich
3. You cannot strength the weak by weakening the strong
4. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.