What Shouldn’t You Do To Help Others? (The Story Of The Man And The Butterfly)

When someone is in embarrassment and has to face problems,  we all tend to offer our help, especially when it comes to a friend, a member of our family, etc.

However, when we offer our help to this person, we often face an obstacle. Our help is not only useless; it is completely superfluous.

So how do we know under what circumstances should we avoid offering to help? Read the rest of this article, and you will find out …

The story of man and the butterfly

Once upon a time there was a man who, while walking, found a butterfly chrysalis on the side of the road. In order to protect it and allow the little butterfly there to hatch under the best possible conditions, he decided to pick it up and take it home.

The next day, he noticed that the chrysalis had a small hole. He then began to examine it more carefully, and then realized that the butterfly that lodged there was struggling to get out of it.

The little beast made terrible efforts, but in vain; she couldn’t get out of her chrysalis. After a while, you might even have thought that she had given up; she remained calm, as if she had resigned herself to surrender.

The man, who was worried about the fate of the butterfly, then grabbed a pair of scissors, and delicately cut the chrysalis from end to end. He wanted to help the little animal out, and he did ; the butterfly finally freed itself from its chrysalis. However, his body was inflamed, and his wings too small, as if they were bent.

The man waited, assuming that this condition was occasional, and that the situation would improve for the butterfly. He already imagined himself spreading his wings to fly away. But things took a different turn: the little beast continued to spin, then died.

Man was unaware that the butterfly’s struggle to come out of its chrysalis is an essential step for him, because this is how he can strengthen his wings.

In this process, the fluids from the animal’s body reach the wings, allowing it to take off afterwards.

The reward of the effort

As we have seen in this story, what is easy is not always good for us. Often, we have to face difficulties, because they allow us to strengthen us and help us.

We must take a positive look at the effort, because it helps us to surpass ourselves. We must not consider effort as something that blocks us and prevents us from moving forward.

In the course of our life we ​​have to face a whole series of “trials” which, if we can overcome them, make us better and allow us to progress.

Let’s take a simple example: babies. When they learn to walk, if you’d rather never let them go than let them fall, then perhaps they will never be able to walk. Falling is not a bad thing, it is a metaphor for life.

Babies always get up after they fall, and over time they manage to stop falling. It is the reward after the effort. That’s why we have to let people who fall get up on their own.

When helping doesn’t help

As we could see previously in the little story of the man and the butterfly, sometimes, when we think we are helping others, we do not help them. 

When a person is going through a difficult time and they start to cry, people tend to run to them to ask what they have (either out of sincerity or out of curiosity). Usually, very few people sit idly by. Of these two behaviors, which is the more judicious?

When we are badly, we need, if only temporarily, to be alone with our suffering.

This does not mean that we do not want to see anyone, but that we need our loved ones to respect the space we need, and that they let us evacuate our suffering.

The best that we can do to help a person who is ill is to sit near them without saying anything, and to accompany them in their suffering by being there if they need to be taken into our care. arm, or if she needs to talk.

You have to understand that sometimes you have to be there for the other, but you have to  let them lead their struggle against suffering on their own, because no one can do it for them.

Overcoming our obstacles alone makes us stronger, more confident, and more self-confident. It should be understood that after each effort comes a reward.

We are therefore not taking the easiest path to take, and we know that no one other than ourselves can take it, no one other than ourselves can achieve our own goals.