Change.

“The caterpillar has to suffer silently in a cocoon in order to become a butterfly. Change is painful in the beginning but it’s worth it in the end.”

~ Jaykaran Sagar

First a little story:

“Once a little boy was playing outdoors and found a fascinating caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it.

The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put plants to eat, and a stick to climb on, in the jar. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat.

One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy worriedly called his mother who came and understood that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon. The mother explained to the boy how the caterpillar was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.

The little boy was thrilled to hear about the changes his caterpillar would go through. He watched every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day it happened, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out.

At first the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! It looked like it couldn’t break free! It looked desperate! It looked like it was making no progress!

The boy was so concerned he decided to help. He ran to get scissors, and then walked back (because he had learned not to run with scissors…). He snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged!

As the butterfly came out the boy was surprised. It had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to support the swollen body. He knew that in time the body would shrink and the butterfly’s wings would expand.

But neither happened!

The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shrivelled wings.

It never was able to fly…

As the boy tried to figure out what had gone wrong his mother took him to talk to a scientist from a local college. He learned that the butterfly was SUPPOSED to struggle. In fact, the butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly. The boy’s good intentions hurt the butterfly.

As you go through school, and life, keep in mind that struggling is an important part of any growth experience. In fact, it is the struggle that causes you to develop your ability to fly.”

I chose this topic for this week’s 2 on 1 Friday blog post where Shackman and I write on the same topic as I have noticed that between the two of us, we have had many similar experiences notably, many changes. We have played different games, got hurt, shifted residences a number of times, our wives have had to change careers, we did too and we both had to be primary caregivers to our wives and we lost our wives despite such caregiving too.

In all these shared experiences, the running refrain has been change. Situational, physical, relationship concerned and even in careers. Both of us have had to undergo many cycles of metamorphosis and I most certainly think that both of us have used the various metamorphosis experiences to come out stronger.

And, serendipitously, Ekoshapu had this up on his blog yesterday!

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”

~ Robert Frost

Please do go over to Shackman’s blog to see what he has to say on the same subject.