Fly high

“Life is a struggle, isn’t it?” mused a friend during a conversation one day.  That came as a revelation to me. I always thought life is kind to everyone, not tough. But it looks as if it is. Was I wrong in my thinking? True, life is a mixture of complexities, but struggles? Perhaps life is trying to convey some key message thro these so-called “struggles”?

That set the thought process. Why do some people struggle? That too constantly. I’ve seen people who have spent the entire life struggling. Life’s woes never seemed to end for them. And why is life so easy for some? They get whatever they want with a snap of a finger. Life is cake walk for them. Are they born with the proverbial “silver spoon”?  

I got the answer through a story that came in my in my email recently. To quote the story:

“A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared; he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther. Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.

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

What the man in his kindness and haste 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 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.

And we could never fly...”

If we want to fly high, if our aims are high, we necessarily need to struggle. And life without high aspirations is not worth living. For those who are born with silver spoon, it may be a joy ride. But the taste of success after a roller coaster ride has its own sweetness. People who have experienced it will vouchsafe for this.

Like the fluid that is present in the body of the butterfly to come out of the cocoon, nature has provided a mechanism as well for us to come out of the struggle. How and where do you look for it? Sorry. There is no Instruction Manual for life with a page for “troubleshooting” and solutions. It is that in-built mechanism. The mechanism to fight.  This mechanism is present in each one of us in varied strength. That is the reason why some people fight relentlessly and some give up half way through. That is the reason why suicides happen.

If we look at the life of great people, we can observe that at some point or the other they had to undergo some struggle to reach the top. Getting something extraordinary in life is never easy. The shining ornament that glitters in front of us had to go through lot of firing and hammering to get that shine finally. The shimmering diamond that attracts us had to go through lots of cuts to get that sparkle.

Yes, now I was convinced. I was not wrong. Life is NOT tough on anyone. All it desires is that we should fly high for our own good. Isn’t it kindness enough?