A constantly evolving chrysalis – of pain, healing and growth -by Pratyush Parashar Das

 

         

“...That’s the thing about pain, it demands to be felt” – Hazel Grace Lancaster, from the novel ‘The Fault In our Stars’ by John Green.

So, hello and a very good evening to all my dear readers, I hope all of you have been doing well, or as well as all of you could be in the current circumstances.

Today I would like to talk about something which I’m sure all of us have gone through in some way, to some degree in the past few years since the pandemic began, something which breaks us, but also makes us, something which crushes us, and yet helps us grow, something, which is at the very essence of being human, and humanity itself, for it helps brings the world closer, in a shared experience.

As my title might have hinted at the same, yes, my dear readers, I am going to talk about pain, and what a powerful force it is, when it comes to transforming oneself and one’s life and the quality of the same.

While going through pain or experiencing it is certainly not a pleasant experience, the truth is, it is what the experience entails is what matters, for it brings insight not experienced otherwise in certain cases, as it were.

 

                                                                                          

After all, if I am to provide an analogy, it would that of the butterfly, which begins its life as a caterpillar, eventually reaching maturity in the course of which it begins to secrete certain fluids from its body allowing the same to semi-solidify to form a chrysalis or cocoon, whence it remains ensconced for a certain period of time, all the while growing its wings with the secretion of its body fluids, breaking through the cocoon by forcing its way through and eventually beginning the next chapter of its life as a butterfly.

 

      

      

 

Now, if one, say out of pity or sympathy tries to ease the to-be-butterfly’s way out by widening the hole or creating one, the to-be-butterfly, then it leaves the insect incomplete and malformed, as it ends up having weak wings, and thus falls prey to predators of its kind.

The basic lesson here is that the pain endured by the butterfly in the course of its emergence from its chrysalis is what provides it with the strength to fly, and thus live its life fearlessly, while easing the same creates for a weaker and poorly equipped butterfly.

In the course of forcing its way out, it finds healing by realizing its own potential and thus reaps the obvious benefits of flight and survival.

In the same way, when we go through some experience that hurts us, breaks us, and so on, what we do not realize is while the pain crushes us momentarily or for as long as the experience goes on, what it does is build up our strength in the course of the same.

 

   

After the experience blows over, comes the acknowledgment of the same, that is, the acknowledgment of the suffering or pain, accompanied by the growth, and the healing as one internalizes and reflects upon the lesson(s) learned from the same.

 

   

The reason why I mentioned a constantly evolving chrysalis above is that in the course of our lives, it is improbable to say that we only experience pain, healing, and growth, in that order once or twice, as, like happiness, pain is also a cycle, or at least part of a ceaseless, evolving cycle, accompanied by contentment and wisdom, which hold the one in good stead throughout the course of one’s life.

And if there is anything the pandemic has shown us, it is that resilience, fortitude, faith, and inner strength are qualities which, even if one is naturally endowed with, are tempered only through the experience of constantly forming and breaking out of multiple chrysalises in the course of our lives, for when looked at with a discerning eye, are not all manner of living organisms butterflies on some scale or the other?