Past, Present, Future-What’s your story?
Over the coming months, we will be embarking together on a journey exploring various themes. This month we need to really dig deep into our own story so we can see where we came from, the good/bad/ugly, so we can move forward into where we want to go.
Pretend for a moment we are at a movie theater and the movie on the screen is your Past. You are simultaneously watching your “film” as well as controlling what “film” is being shown. Going back 1 year, 5 years, 10, keep going, what sorts of scenes play out in front of you? Are there some familiar themes that keep playing over and over, just the actors changes?
While you are going back to the beginning, notice how each leads to the next scene of your life and so on, everything builds on each other to create the YOU you are today. There are happy times and really really shitty times. Be grateful for them all.
Accepting and being grateful for all of it, especially the bad, helps you move forward with a grateful heart. It is through struggle that we learn the most of who we are and what we are capable of. We become strong because we HAVE to. Stretching ourselves beyond what we thought possible gives us confidence to take with us into the future. It also shows us that the road will bend, the struggle with end.
Now that we are older and parents, we have a different outlook on struggle when it comes to our children. We love them so much that we don’t want to see them in pain or be shown life’s hardships at such a young age. Remember, struggle and strife are a part of life. We can not appreciate the good without the bad. We are watching them grow, seeing how their present will become their past and shape their lives. Help them, but we can not coddle or put them in a bubble. When I think of children and how they grow, my mind always comes back to the story of the Man Who Helped the Butterfly. Replace “man” with Parents and “Butterfly” with children in the story for a broader interpretation.
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 large to get through it. After a long struggle, it appeared to be exhausted and remained absolutely still.
The man decided to help the butterfly and, with a pair of scissors, he cut open the cocoon, thus releasing the butterfly. However, the butterfly’s body was very small and wrinkled and its wings were all crumpled.
The man continued to watch, hoping that, at any moment, the butterfly would open its wings and fly away. Nothing happened; in fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its brief life dragging around its shrunken body and shriveled wings, incapable of flight.
What the man – out of kindness and his eagerness to help – had failed to understand was that the tight cocoon and the efforts that the butterfly had to make in order to squeeze out of that tiny hole were Nature’s way of training the butterfly and of strengthening its wings.
Sometimes, a little extra effort is precisely what prepares us for the next obstacle to be faced. Anyone who refuses to make that effort, or gets the wrong sort of help, is left unprepared to fight the next battle and never manages to fly off to their destiny.
(Adapted from a story sent in by Sonaira D’Avila)
Now that you can see how your past has shaped your present, be mindful with your children. To overprotect them too much does not allow them to gain strength and fly on their own. We want the best for our kids, let’s not unintentionally clip their wings causing more struggle later in life.