The Story of a Struggle

A friend sent me a beautiful Email the other day filled with pretty pictures of butterflies and accompanied by a story about a man who spotted a butterfly attempting to force its way out of a small opening in its cocoon.  There was lovely and uplifting music in the background.

 

With the intention of helping the creature, he took a small scissors and cut the cocoon enabling the butterfly to emerge with ease.  He waited for the butterfly, now on the ground, to flap its wings and fly away. It never did and most certainly died.  The man did not know that the lengthy and arduous effort the butterfly expends in struggling to force its way out of the cocoon squeezes its bodily fluids into its wings, and once out of the cocoon, enables the butterfly to be ready to fly.  In relieving the butterfly from this “struggle,” as well-meaning as the man was, he actually caused its death.  The butterfly needed to go through its struggle in order to survive.

The Email then went on to moralize about the importance of struggle, stating that “struggle” sometimes is exactly what we need in our lives.  It implies that it strengthens a person and that anything worth having is worth struggling for.  I see the logic of this but when I think of the people who are unemployed in this country today, the homeless, the people who are already “struggling” to make ends meet, pay their bills, clothe their kids and put food on the table, I cannot think of their struggles as being ennobling in any manner.  People are not butterflies.

This is very subtle stuff, but exposure to it might result in recipients of the Email feeling that unemployment benefits, Medicaid, aid to dependent children and such other aspects of our country’s social and economic safety net are unnecessary and a waste of government money.  They might even feel that like the butterfly, the people who are dependent on such benefits can actually benefit by struggling even harder than they are already struggling. I disagree.  The homeless gentleman in the picture above, taken on the streets of Boston, probably does too.  If the Email  I received happens to reach you, don’t be fooled by pretty pictures of butterflies. 
Jack Lippman