STRUGGLE

                 
                "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who
                 profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation,
                 are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
                 They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want
                 the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This
                 struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one;
                 or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle"
                                                                                          --  Deepak Chopra
         
                 
                 "Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of
                  ease left a name worth remembering"
                                                                                          -- Albert Camus
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.

 The students were waiting and it happened. The butterfly struggled to get out of the cocoon, and one of the students took pity on it and decided to help the butterfly out of the cocoon against the advice of his teacher. 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 happened. He explained to this student that by helping the butterfly, he had actually killed it because it is a law of nature that the struggle to come out of the cocoon actually helps develop and strengthen its wings. The boy had deprived the butterfly of its struggle and the butterfly died.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If nature 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.

Apply this same principle to our lives. Nothing worthwhile in life comes without a struggle. Parents tend to hurt the ones they love most because we don't allow them to struggle to gain strength.

As a culture we spend a lot of energy trying to make life easier, daydreaming of the times when we won’t have to go to work, yearning for all of life to fall into fairytale ease.

Yet life doesn’t work like that. And for good reason. We need conflict. We need difficulty in our lives. We need to go through challenges.

We don’t change when life is easy. We change through conflict.

A man who work in wilderness therapy with young adults has this to say."Many of the adults are drug addicts. Many of the kids come from privileged backgrounds and have had far too much ease in life. By that I mean not having to work, having daddy’s credit card, lots of toys, etc. When these kids show up in the high deserts of Southern Utah, they hate it. They’ve traded in their comfy beds for a half inch foam pad, a sleeping bag, and a tarp for a shelter.

Life is hard. Instead of being discouraged when we face obstacles, we can embrace them. Because obstacles have a way of making us better if we allow them the space.

If we change how we view struggle, hardship, and challenges in life, we can endure, and through the difficulties, we can grow.

We can approach life in a way that better equips us to live more meaningful lives.



      THANKS FOR READING