A man once found a butterfly in its cocoon, struggling to push its body through a small hole. After a while, it seemed unable to go any further. He decided to help, so he cut open the rest of the cocoon with scissors. The butterfly then emerged easily, but its body was swollen, and its wings were small and shriveled. He watched, expecting the wings to grow and stretch until they could support the butterfly’s body, but that never happened.
When I read this story, I remembered the first time I left my family home to work abroad. I had to live alone in a small apartment and take care of household chores like cooking, tidying, cleaning, and doing laundry. I had no experience with these tasks, like most of my generation from the middle class at that time, since we always had one or two helpers at home under my late mother’s supervision. The most I could manage, after much insistence and guidance from her, was to heat a piece of bread and fill it with cheese or fried eggs. In my new apartment, I tried for two months to handle housework myself, then gave up and started ordering takeout, hiring a cleaning service twice a week, and sending my clothes to the laundromat.
I also recalled how I never trained for work during summer vacations in my university years, but spent my time having fun with friends at the beach. That was in the late eighties, when it was socially frowned upon—except in very rare cases—for a student to work, lest people assume the father could not provide for the family. Many parents also thought that forbidding their children from working spared them hardship, while assuming the young would magically gain diligence, experience, and responsibility once they entered professional life. We children were content with these justifications. When I started my first job, I needed several months to learn the basics of administrative systems, and much longer to grasp their intricacies, as well as the intentions and rivalries of the people involved. It took about three years before I felt I had mastered the fundamentals of my work and its tools and techniques. Only then did I begin refining my methods and approaches to different work situations. Many of my peers needed even more time, switching jobs multiple times, before reaching this stage, while only a few managed it faster.
I also recalled how most of my generation were shielded from family conflicts and public issues under the pretext that sparing children from tension and grudges would keep them from viewing life negatively. This rationale, though seemingly convincing, was overused. Children, once they are around ten years old—give or take—can sense quarrels, disputes, and financial crises no matter how much parents try to hide them. Keeping them in the dark, or failing to involve them in a simple, age-appropriate way, makes them believe problems are solved by burying them, especially when they see their parents’ relationships return to normal without knowing how or why. Following their parents’ example, children then hide their own problems instead of seeking guidance, and lose their compass for honest direction. They also begin applying this same “burying” method in all their relationships, avoiding openness and dialogue, relying instead on suspicion and convenient self-serving interpretations. Over the years, they become so accustomed to this approach that it solidifies into a life pattern, hard to abandon or replace. The same behaviors, standards, and outcomes apply to public affairs, compounded by lack of experience and limited ability to face or even engage with them.
For most of my generation, childhood, adolescence, and youth carried no significant responsibilities beyond schoolwork. But studying alone was not enough to occupy our minds, which have vast capacities that cannot be satisfied with one pursuit. Deprived of real responsibilities, young people feel boredom and unconsciously seek outlets for their energy. With little experience and few incentives toward sports or cultural activities, they turn to trivial or superficial distractions that satisfy their vanity but do little to build life skills or protect them from shallow, often distorted, notions.
I have seen my generation, as well as the ones before and after me from the middle and upper classes, grow up in this environment. These were the very classes that held most of the leadership positions and executive jobs then, and continue to do so now. From my observation of public life today, through conversations and social media, I have not noticed any fundamental change. In my impression—not based on statistics—there has been only slight improvement in some parents’ understanding of the need to equip their children with skills to face life’s challenges and uncertainties. On the other hand, the number of helpers and nannies in upper-class homes has increased, ensuring their children secure prestigious and lucrative positions, while maintaining the same standard of living they grew up with.
What the man who cut open the cocoon did not realize was that the cocoon itself was the essential environment for nurturing the spirit of determination the butterfly needed to squeeze through the small opening. That was the only way it could pump blood from its body into its wings to prepare for flight. Without completing this struggle, how could it ever deal with the demands and challenges of life outside the cocoon?
Responsibilities, experiences, and hardships are the sources of human determination—and determination is the surfboard we ride to cross the turbulent waves of life’s journey. If our lives were free of problems, frustrations, and obstacles, we would be left paralyzed and helpless. We would never become strong… and we would never learn to fly.
