The Struggle Makes Us Stronger
June 28, 2025
When we are going through a turbulent time, we often can't see past the struggle. Life just feels hard, which can weaken our spirit and cause a sense of inadequacy and hopelessness, as our mind floods with questions.
Why can't I get ahead? What is wrong with me? How am I going to make it through this? Will I ever achieve my goals and dreams?
While we all experience struggles, I think it's even more difficult to watch someone we care about go through a rough patch. We instictively want to ease the burden by swooping in to save them. But often the best course of action is to offer encouragement, then step back and allow the process to unfold naturally. By intervening, we can potentially block the growth opportunities these struggles are meant to provide.
This reminds me of a story told by Frank Dupree in his book Metamorphosis:
A young boy came across a butterfly cocoon and brought it into his house. He watched, over the course of hours, as the butterfly struggled to break free from its confinement. It managed to create a small hole in the cocoon, but its body was too large to emerge. It tired and became still. Wanting to help the butterfly, the boy snipped a slit in the cocoon with a pair of scissors. But the butterfly was small, weak, and its wings crumpled. The boy expected the insect to take flight, but instead it could only drag its undeveloped body along the ground. It was incapable of flying. The boy, in his eagerness to help the butterfly, stunted its development. What he did not know was that the butterfly needed to go through the process of struggling against the cocoon to gain strength and fill its wings with blood. It was the struggle that made it stronger.
Just because we, or someone we know, are experiencing difficulty, and it seems like one big failure and calamity after another, it doesn't mean we're not going to get an amazing ending. One day, we will look back and chuckle at how everything was going so poorly, yet we never gave up. We will understand why it all had to unfold the way that it did. The struggles made us stronger, wiser and more resilient. They were actually gifts that built within us compassion, appreciation, values, clarity and confidence. They prepared and fortified us with the perseverance to withstand dang near anything. Looking back we will surely see that struggle, adversity and hardship were not just obstacles to overcome, but powerful catalysts that grew us for our own good.