Once upon a time a scientist who was enthralled with the exotic emperor moth, (because their wings are as beautiful as butterflies), found a caterpillar ready to spin its cocoon. He gently cupped the caterpillar and took it back to his laboratory. He placed the caterpillar in a glass container and watched as the caterpillar built his cocoon. The caterpillar then fell into a deep sleep. Soon this fuzzy little crawling caterpillar would become an amazingly exotic emperor moth floating in the sky.

Some months later the day came when the moth was ready to leave the cocoon. The scientist watched anxiously as the new tiny head of the moth chewed its way into the light of the laboratory. The moth struggled and struggled to escape its cocoon seemingly getting nowhere. Its body was simply too large to fit through the tiny hole it had made. The moth finally tired and laid its small head on the shell of the cocoon where it had poked out.

The scientist felt so badly he took it upon himself to help the tiny creature. “How could I stand here for so many hours watching this beautiful moth go through such agony and pain?” he questioned. “Where is my mercy?” So he took a pair of tweezers and his scissors and began to cut away the cocoon. As soon as the cocoon was opened, the moth fell from the cocoon. But he did not fall upwards into the sky. No, he was badly deformed and fell on the floor where he died within minutes.

Soon after the scientist discovered that it was precisely the moth’s struggle to escape from the cocoon that allows him to do so. His struggle forces the fluids down into the body of the emperor moth that give it its ability to fly. Furthermore, the struggle perfectly proportions the moth as it works to free itself from the cocoon. Cutting away the cocoon, as the scientist had done in an effort to help, had actually killed the moth and interrupted its natural life-cycle.

The moral of the story: Struggle is not necessarily a bad thing and often it is what helps us grow. Sometimes when you seem to be caught in a struggle, you are actually in a germination stage, like the moth transforming into something even greater.

Food for thought: What happens if you relax into the struggle?