{"id":126068,"date":"2019-01-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=126068"},"modified":"2019-01-15T13:02:25","modified_gmt":"2019-01-15T13:02:25","slug":"a-butterfly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/01\/a-butterfly\/","title":{"rendered":"A Butterfly"},"content":{"rendered":"

One day a small opening appeared on a cocoon. A man sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.<\/p>\n

The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.<\/p>\n

What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand, was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening was nature’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If we never faced any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Dietrich Fischer (1941-2015) from M\u00fcnsingen, Switzerland, got a Licentiate in Mathematics from the University of Bern 1968 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University 1976. 1986-88 he was a MacArthur Fellow in International Peace and Security at Princeton University. He has taught mathematics, computer science, economics and peace studies at various universities and been a consultant to the United Nations. He was co-founder, with Johan Galtung, of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/a> in 1993<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Excerpted from Dietrich Fischer’s <\/em>Stories to Inspire You<\/a> – TRANSCEND University Press-TUP<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One day a small opening appeared on a cocoon. A man sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":65349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspirational"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}