Challenges make you stronger : Entry 2 analogy

Story 1 :

Once a little boy was playing outdoors and found a fascinating caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it.

The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put plants to eat, and a stick to climb on, in the jar. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat.

One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy worriedly called his mother who came and understood that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon. The mother explained to the boy how the caterpillar was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.

The little boy was thrilled to hear about the changes his caterpillar would go through. He watched every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day it happened, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out.

At first the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! It looked like it couldn’t break free! It looked desperate! It looked like it was making no progress!

The boy was so concerned he decided to help. He ran to get scissors, and then walked back (because he had learned not to run with scissors…). He snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged!

As the butterfly came out the boy was surprised. It had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to support the swollen body. He knew that in time the body would shrink and the butterfly’s wings would expand.

But neither happened! 

The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.

It never was able to fly…

As the boy tried to figure out what had gone wrong his mother took him to talk to a scientist from a local college. He learned that the butterfly was SUPPOSED to struggle. In fact, the butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly. The boy’s good intentions hurt the butterfly.

Story 2 :

Twenty years ago, in the summer of 1988, Yellowstone caught fire. The fires, which began in June, continued to burn until November, when winter snows extinguished the last blazes. Over the course of that summer and fall, more than 25,000 firefighters were brought in from around the country.

In the end, the flames scorched about 1.2 million acres across the greater Yellowstone area, leaving the impression that the world's first national park had been destroyed.

However, what many in the media, and in the general public, failed to understand at the time was that fire — even fire of this magnitude — was necessary to maintain the overall health of Yellowstone's ecosystem. Lodgepole pines — tall, skinny trees with branches near the top, or crown — dominate most of Yellowstone's landscape. Some of their pine cones are sealed with a waxy resin and only open once temperatures reach above 113 degrees Fahrenheit. In other words, the trees need the heat of those fires in order to reproduce.

"Fire is as important to the great lodgepole ecosystems of the Northern Rockies as sunshine and rain," Barbee said. "So the forest recycled itself quickly. Now if you go to Yellowstone, you'll see a carpet of green, the forest is fully recovering. And so we don't characterize the fire as causing damage to the park."

A visit to the park proves his point. The 1988 fires undeniably changed Yellowstone's landscape, but they didn't destroy the park. Seedlings began to appear as early as 1989 and now there are healthy and green 20-year-old trees covering the park.

“Some pine trees, including Monterey Pine and Pond Pine, have cones that stay tightly closed, making it impossible for the seeds to get out, until they are exposed to high temperatures such as are found in a forest fire. These are called “fire climax pines”. Seeds cannot germinate to form new trees until the parent trees have been destroyed in a forest fire, assuring that the new trees will not have to struggle in darkness among adult trees, but will only be among trees of the same age. When there is a fire, the number of seeds released is great enough to assure survival of enough new trees to reforest the area. Fire climax pines are able to maintain their presence against the incursion of other species of trees because fire destroys all of the adult trees, but only the pines are naturally replanted.”

We humans,have STRUGGLES. We humans,have WILDFIRES. and the thing is,we need it ;)
To be Better 

Now what is there to learn from all of this ? Well I hope I had made my point, as you can see it is a lengthy one -______- . The point IS.well the title itself. 

Challenges makes you stronger. 

the end.hehe


Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage.
The human spirit is to grow stronger by conflict
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING


The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials
CHINESE PROVERB




P.S Drawings by me,sorry - I know,I know, whattan eye-sore