The Butterfly Parable
As a parent, as a friend, or as a spouse, the instinct to help is hard to resist. We see our loved ones struggling, and we want to step in and save them from hardship. We want to offload their pain onto ourselves.
By doing so, however, we’re eliminating the circumstances that the people we love need for their own personal development. It’s instinctive, and understandable, to want to help. But often the best course of action is to wait and, like the butterfly, let the process unfold on its own terms and timeline — The struggle you’re in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow.
A child came across a butterfly cocoon and brought it into their house. The child watched, over the course of hours, as the butterfly struggled to break free from its confinement. It managed to create a small hole in the cocoon, but its body was too large to emerge. It tired and became still.
Wanting to help the butterfly, the child snipped a slit in the cocoon with a pair of scissors. But the butterfly was small, weak, and its wings crumpled. The child expected the insect to take flight, but instead it could only drag its undeveloped body along the ground. It was incapable of flying.
The child, in eagerness to help the butterfly, stunted its development. What the child did not know was that the butterfly needed to go through the process of struggling against the cocoon to gain strength and fill its wings with blood — It was the struggle that made it stronger.
While it’s hard to watch those who we are close to struggle, often the best help we can provide is to do nothing. By intervening, and shouldering the burden ourselves, we rob those we care about of the opportunity to grow and get stronger.