Is Your Help Hindering Someone’s Growth

Sometimes in the daily rush of living, we get to hear or read a few lines that bring you a fresh perspective on your own ideas. A while ago I received a short story which I found had a very profound meaning in our daily lives. It has been going around on various social media platforms and I am sure you would have already read it, but I’ll quickly recapitulate it here before I go ahead to make my point. The story was about a man who watched a butterfly struggling to get out of its cocoon. He watched it push itself out millimeter by millimeter and was fascinated by what he saw of the butterfly’s determination. 

 When it appeared to give up, perhaps it was only resting as it needed a short break, the man decided to help it emerge from the cocoon by taking a scissors and snipping it away. Unfortunately, the lower part of the butterfly looked deformed and no matter how hard it tried, it could not fly. Apparently the struggle through the cocoon opening is required to strengthen the wings of the butterfly for flight. While the man wanted to help and was coming from good intentions, his actions inadvertently damaged the butterfly forever.

Now I’ll ask you to think about all the good you do for other people in your lives. Do you run to help out someone who is having a difficult time? Is your timely help to the person in this situation denying the person a lesson in life that would allow them to grow as an individual? Obviously I am not speaking about life and death situations or crisis events where your help is a must. There are some other situations where a person may not even have asked for your help, but you decided to give them the benefit of your “expertise”.

Please understand that this is not criticism for being a helpful person, but rather a query to check if you are doing more than you should. More than you need to do. It is noble of you to offer your help in many situations and the person who receives this help is benefited immediately when he receives it. However in the long term, did your help actually hinder the person’s progress? Did it steal away a chance for him or her to learn a new skill that would come in handy later in life? Don’t be so eager to take away all the challenges in a person’s life that he does not get to learn the soul lessons he is here to learn.

Think about the proverb that when you feed a man a fish you help him for a day, but when you teach him to catch his own fish you have fed him for the rest of his life. So be helpful, share your resources and expertise, but allow the people around you to find their own way out of a muddle of their own creating. Even if you help them this once, the challenge will keep revisiting them all their lives till they learn the soul lesson they were supposed to. Guide the person to solve his own problems the next time, rather than racing in and solving it for them.