We could be a rock.

Have you ever found yourself struggling to understand life?

Do you ever worry about what might happen next?

How often do you feel like you aren't good enough?

I do.

And it’s okay if you do, too.

I believe it's natural for humans to hold onto all of those emotions.

You should never feel criticized for them, though.

However, you should never want to feel that emotion too long.

It's a heavy burden on you.

And the longer it remains, the more it intensifies internally.

And what peace we loose along the way…

I believe that many of the issues we encounter are simply a part of how the world operates.

It's measuring ourselves against the world, or even against another individual.

What the world offers one person isn't always what it offers us.

Thus, it becomes simple to see ourselves as inferior to those who might possess more.

It becomes easy to compare ourselves to those we meet every day.

This does not always have to be an in person circumstance.

It can be in what we watch or hear from another.

We judge ourselves against others based on their appearances, abilities, and experiences.

We observe how they achieve success in their work, business, relationships, and friendships, as well as how they conduct themselves in social settings, to understand how we can succeed in life.

It's challenging.

We face it every day.

Then, we feel it.

And all those negative emotions consume us.

You might claim that it doesn't.

But, we all know…

I was sitting outside one day and I remember looking out and seeing this rock.

It was deep rooted in the ground, of a decent size, but not too big.

Grass had sprouted up around it.

I recall thinking how fortunate I am that I do not exist as that rock.

You get stepped on, weathered, and abandoned in the cold.

You remain unchanged and ageless, with your life existing there forever.

You are eternally like this rock, simply there, overlooked.

Never experiencing what it means to live.

Not discovering new places or acquiring new knowledge.

Always lacking the experience of being loved or understanding how to love.

Therefore, I considered, even when life becomes difficult.

I could be that rock.

And perhaps for just a moment, I felt better.

I look beyond my own opinions and feelings

For a moment, I forget.

Sometimes, thinking about someone else's worse situation makes me feel better.

It's unfortunate, but I do.

I think,

“I shouldn't feel upset since this person is going through this…”

“I shouldn’t worry about my life because it could be like this….”

It makes everything appear simpler and more tranquil, leading you to value what you possess even more.

Sadly, as days pass, I inevitably find myself complaining once again.

Expressing dissatisfaction about another matter or someone else's actions.

But, I could be that rock.

It's amusing really.

As we age we become wiser.

On the surface it seems useful.

Then, we begin to perceive things in a different way.

We have to grow up.

And as we grow up, we encounter much more than we did before.

It requires confronting those issues and maturing to understand…

This is life.

I've come to understand that each of us has our own story.

Parts of the stories we share are merely segments or chapters of our lives.

What we actually observe is merely one aspect of a person's true life.

It highlights only the positive moments, the major occasions, and occasionally the life-altering events that never remain unnoticed in our interconnected world.

However, nobody truly knows everything.

They are often unaware of the silent struggles individuals endure.

It's simple to put on a smile in public and then shed tears in the shower afterward.

We don’t talk about the shower cry.

That chapter never gets seen.

But, we could be that rock.

Here’s the deal.

Life goes on.

Even when you are at your worst.

It still goes on.

And here is the hard truth…

It will get better.….for a time.

But, it might become worse once more.

Or it just will.

At times, we believe we must overcome this to improve for the future chapters of our lives.

However, we overlook the fact that another storm is imminent.

It’s just around the corner.

We cannot wait for the world to be perfect before achieving perfection within ourselves.

It will never happen.

We are not always going to be our best selves all the time.

We are not always going to heal completely from the hand we may have been dealt as a child or the hand we are being dealt with at this moment in time.

Because the hands keep dealing.

They don’t stop.

We can continuously come up with excuses for why we are the way we are and why we act the way we do, citing various reasons….

Alternatively, we can understand that our identity, how we developed into who we are, and our emotions about it, constitute life.

It is our duty to take responsibility for how we advance in every situation.

And friends, that’s just it.

Life continues on, and it doesn't pause for us to dwell in it.

It doesn't care.

We ought to embrace life completely despite our scars, as our time here is limited.

Don’t be that rock.

I often notice this, and I could also be speaking to myself, but we can spend endless days feeling miserable and isolated, avoiding the inevitable because we're too afraid to confront it.

But, we need to face it.

Not confront it as in dismiss it or attempt to move beyond it... because we never truly move beyond what it is... it will always remain present because it’s a part of us.

However, we must confront it by allowing it to exist as it is, while we pursue being who we want to be.

What we long to be.

What we are genuinely meant to be.

I read somewhere that what we bury deep inside of us is buried alive. That’s deep.

However, it is true.

Why do we do that?

Bury things.

It only makes us more like a rock.

Stuck.

Rooted in the depths of suffering and anguish.

We don’t have to be that rock.

The rock can’t change, remember.

It does not have the choices in life that we do.

If possible, it would enjoy being a deer, a tree, a flower, or a butterfly.

But it will never become those things.

But you can be.

You can change.

If you wanted to, you could become a butterfly.

Metaphorically that is.

When a caterpillar begins the process of metamorphosis, it sheds its skin and forms a hard shell around it.

And it must remain inside that hard shell for an extended period of time.

It remains there, still and vulnerable.

When it senses safety, it starts to shed its old parts, which then dissolve.

However, some parts of it still remain.

After remaining dormant, those parts start to absorb nutrients and rebuild themselves.

Each small component serves as a blueprint for reconstructing every new part of the butterfly, gradually assembling an entirely new body plan over time.

However, the hard part is not over.

You see, the butterfly must exert effort to emerge from the chrysalis.

Its wings lack strength.

They are weak.

They need to be filled with fluid to have the strength to fly.

Although it has wings, it has never taken flight before.

The final stage is likely the most challenging part of the cycle.

Because it ultimately turned into what it was meant to be…

But it still needs to strive in order to fly.

Don’t you get it?

The caterpillar underwent a complete transformation.

While it retained only certain components, such as sections of its nervous system, it underwent a transformation to become what it was intended to be.

Despite the change, it continued to be difficult.

Nevertheless, it finished the cycle.

Ironically, it conveys a profound life lesson that I cannot forget.

Stop making excuses for why you must remain as you are, as if you were born to be unchangeable like a rock.

As if you have been stepped on, weathered, left alone in the cold.

Move..

Face it.

Change.

You're not an unchanging stone.

You're simply a caterpillar, discovering how to become a butterfly.

So, become a butterfly.