You have probably heard of the butterfly story. The author of the story is not known, but many authors have given their version of it with slight variations in the narrative.

Here is the story:

A man spent hours watching a butterfly struggling to emerge from its cocoon. It managed to make a small hole, but its body was too huge to get through it. After a long struggle, it appeared to be tired, and remained absolutely still, seeming to give up.

The man thought he would help the butterfly, and with a pair of scissors, he cut open the cocoon, thus releasing the butterfly. However, the butterfly’s body was tiny and wrinkled, and its wings were all crinkly.

The man continued to watch, thinking that at any moment the butterfly would unfold its wings and fly away. Nothing happened; in fact, the butterfly spent the remainder of its brief life crawling around its shrunken body and crinkly wings, incapable of flying.

What the man out of kindness and his eagerness to help had failed to understand was that the close-fitting cocoon and the efforts the butterfly was forced to make in order to squeeze out of that small hole were Nature’s way of training the butterfly and of strengthening its wings.

Lessons you and I can learn from a butterfly:

· Unless we give a chance to our talents and skills, they will stay dormant or they will shiver inside. What we are capable of can only be possible if it is given a chance.

· Losing hope is the most destructive thing we do. Without hope, we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. Let us not lose hope because we never know what tomorrow will bring.

· Life is like a butterfly. If we do the same thing again and again the result will be the same. For things to change we must do things differently. We go through changes before we become something beautiful.

· We must have a strong reason for leaving a place we no longer want to be in. We must hate our current circumstances enough so that we can put our foot in the new direction. You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.

· When we see someone’s success we see automatically the success that is right in front of us. We do not see the struggle behind. We do not see the long walk that has led to the present moment. The struggle is developing us.

“Behind every beautiful thing, there is some kind of pain.” Bob Dylan

·We must love the journey. We must love each stage we pass through. We don’t recognize it immediately but every step in our journey is making us stronger than ever before. Without the different steps, we would be the same.

·We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through.

“The wings of transformation are born out of patience and struggle.” Janet S. Dickens

·Let us not settle for anything. We can do so much more. Let us not stand in our own way. Let us learn from nature.

If a caterpillar decided on being a caterpillar, we would not even have known a butterfly.

·When you think you are at the end of something, try to remember that point might be the beginning of another journey.

What you see right in front of you might deceive you into thinking that it is the end of the road but that point is also the beginning of a new road.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

To your inspirations,

Banchi