Beauty from Struggle

This is a short, edited essay by an unknown author that appeared on the website The Business School of Happiness. I loved it. 

So often, we are looking for solutions to our problems. We want it to be better. We forget that the beauty is in the struggle.

Enjoy the essay. And the struggle.

One day, as a young woman sat in her garden, she noticed a cocoon hanging from a nearby branch.

Before long, a small opening appeared in the cocoon. The woman watched for several hours as the butterfly within struggled to free itself from the envelope in which it had recently been transformed.

Then, it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if the butterfly had gotten as far as it could and it could not go any further.

So the woman decided to help the butterfly: she took a pair of scissors and cut open the cocoon, from which the butterfly then emerged easily.

But, to the woman's surprise, the butterfly didn't fly away. Instead it crawled out onto the branch and sat there. As the woman looked more closely, she noticed the butterfly's body was withered, its wings were tiny and shriveled.

The woman continued to watch because she expected that, at any moment, the wings would open, enlarge and expand sufficiently to support the butterfly's body.

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

What the woman, in her kindness and her goodwill did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening, were Nature'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 life was without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as we can be; possibly unable to fly.

As someone once said, "I received nothing that I wanted... But everything that I needed."

Live life without fear, confront all obstacles and know you can overcome them.