I love good quotes; I keep them plastered around my office, in my car, in the kitchen, pantry, laundry room, and anywhere else I might be when I need a boost (which is often and everywhere with 5 kids under the age of 10).
As an aside, I find New Yorker cartoons equally necessary. However, their purpose is to make me laugh, not think. Laughter is very necessary in my world. And easier than thinking. For the record, I do not like Far Side cartoons. I simply don’t get them. I think I’m missing a requisite brain cell or something.
At any rate, here is one of my favorite sayings:
“Just when the caterpillar thought its life was over, it became a butterfly.”
It’s human nature, it seems, to instinctively view what appear to be discouraging events (setbacks, inconveniences, even failures) negatively. Now, I don’t believe in failure as the dictionary describes it (a person or thing that is not successful). My definition of failure is: an experience in which the universe feels compelled to grab someone by their hair and whip them in an altogether different direction because they simply aren’t listening!
I’ve learned over the years that what may be initially perceived as a setback or inconvenience often ends up proving beneficial on one way or another.
I’m reminded of the day I was running late to pick up my kids from school and hit every red light on my way there. Those red lights seemed so inconvenient, until I came upon a multi-car collision two blocks from the school and realized I likely would have been involved had I not been stopped by all of those lights.
Or the night we ran out of toilet paper at 7:30, forcing me to get out of my pajamas and into the store. But I ran into a friend in the cake aisle (it’s right by the toilet paper, I swear), and she gave me a great lead for a project I was working on. I hadn’t thought to call her, yet she was the perfect person to help me.
Much more devastating, I’m reminded of those whose alarms didn’t go off on September 11, 2001, causing them to miss Flight 11, Flight 93, Flight 77 or Flight 175. Or those who got stuck in traffic on July 7, 2005, and missed their train in the London subway.
What initially seemed an inconvenience on those days literally saved their lives.
So you’ve got this caterpillar who finds himself slowly being bound up — by what, exactly, he’s not entirely sure. He then finds himself stuck inside a hot cocoon. If he finds himself this way in July in Arizona, he’s probably really miserable. He may even be claustrophobic to boot.
In this scenario, he has two choices.
He can think, “This is awful. I’m hot. I can’t see anything. Why is this happening to me?” feel sorry for himself, and resign himself to certain death. Or, he can think, “I don’t know what is going on here. But it’s cozy and dark so I’ll take a nap and trust that something decent will come of it.”
In the end, something much more than decent comes of it. He emerges a beautiful, free-flying butterfly. As a caterpillar, he was confined to seeing only that portion of earth that rests on (or very near to) the ground and only as widespread as his legs enabled him to travel each day. But, as a butterfly, he can explore the world in its entirety, seeing it from whatever angle he chooses.
Most of us wake up each morning with some semblance of a plan, but we don’t truly know what each day holds. We don’t know what each days’ events hold. We can only control so much. So, in the end, much of our sense of peace comes down to faith and attitude. To trusting that no matter what the current circumstance, there is something to be gained. To looking at each experience and wondering not why it happened but how to turn it into something positive.
The Little Engine that Could didn’t know he could climb that mountain until he told himself, “I think I can.” Which reminds me of another of my favorite quotes.
“They can because they think they can.”
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What is your favorite quote?
