Life is about overcoming obsticals, before being able to bounce back.
Many of the young students of the Master Tao didn't really understand this and the importance of the hard times.He decided one day to emphasise the reason for challenges to them through an inspirational story about a man who found a cocoon of a butterfly and one day a small opening appeared.
He 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 a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shrivelled wings.
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 shrivelled wings. It never was able to fly.The man immediately realised that in his kindness and haste, he did not understand that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening was the natural 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.