Food For Thought

I used to go hiking alone on weekend afternoons.  Usually I'd tuck my little camera into my waistpouch just in case I came across anything interesting.  But sometimes instead of looking for interesting things, I'd go into a thinking spree and just let my mind wander.  There was once when the sight of a butterfly which took my mind into recall mode.  I remember an email story from a friend telling about a lesson from a butterfly.

 

There was this good guy who came across a butterfly struggling to get out from its cocoon.  It was struggling with all its might and coming out slowly bit by bit.  So, this kind-hearted guy, seeing the futile struggles of the poor creature, came back with a pair of scissors and snipped open the cocoon.  The butterfly then came out and crawled away.  But it couldn't fly!  Its body was too big and its wings too small to carry all that weight! 

 

I couldn't recall the moral of the story as written by the story-teller.  But my mind kept working around the image of the struggling creature getting out of the cocoon to become a real butterfly.  In that process, as told by the story, the creature had to use its strength to struggle and transfer the weight of its body to increase the size of its wings so that it could fly.  The kind-hearted guy didn't do the butterfly a good turn.  Instead, he had destroyed the creature's whole future by giving it a short-cut through life.

 

I thought about how some people become rich or attain better positions in their work places, not through their own hard work, qualifications or merits but through some friends or family members in high places pulling strings for them.  Those who gain wealth without hard work usually squander away their money without putting them to good use.  The ones who gain high positions without merits or putting in their sweat to learn the tricks of the trade eventually become useless in their positions and take their department or even the whole company down with them.  So, taking a lesson from nature and relating it to real live, we learn that there are no short cuts and those who take them do so at their own risk.

 

Although I'm doubtful about how a real butterfly actually goes through its metamorphosis, the image of that story remains in my mind.  Of course it already took up a good part of the time that I need to complete my trip up and down the track through the hills.  It's certainly good food for thought.