Here’s a story someone told me long ago on summer evening:
When butterflies emerge, they must wage a battle to be born. They struggle to emerge from their chrysalis, the small sack that holds them. They push and pull inside until the sack finally breaks. When they are finally free, their wings are folded and damp; once they dry, they can fly away, miraculously transformed from a caterpillar
One day a bystander took pity on a butterfly struggling to break free from its sack. Watching its painful birth, the observer slit the sack imprisoning it and the butterfly emerged without a struggle. But sadly, the little newborn tried to flap its wings, but couldn’t, because it hadn’t struggled enough to release the substance that would coat its wings and allow it to fly. It is in the struggle to free itself, the person telling me this story said, that the butterfly gains the strength it to live.
It can be helpful to remind ourselves of this little parable on tough days when working on a writing project is a struggle. When ideas don’t come easily and we have to fight to find them. Often the ideas we struggle to capture prove to be the most meaningful.
Maybe this is what Randy Pausch, the wonderful Carnegie Mellon professor, meant in The Last Lecture when he said: “The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”
Trust emergence—this has become a new mantra for me. By this I mean that from moment to moment, I’m inviting myself to trust that all is well, all is as it should be. If I am struggling, then this is part of my growth.
I once asked a wise friend what the opposite of control was. Her one-word answer: trust. When we trust, we gain confidence and strength. When we trust, we know that our struggles, whatever they are, have meaning, and that if we fight through them, we will come to a larger, more spacious place.
If we hit a major challenge and manage to break through and fly free, it’s a great feeling, isn’t it? As my friend and mentor Rob Gilbert says, there’s nothing more satisfying than grappling with something very challenging that you really care about.
Sometime today, you’re going to face something tough — something you have to struggle with. And when you do, just remember the butterfly and its wings — and write on!
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