Encounter with Life

Tynoly (pronounced tie-no-lee) looked over at his brother playing with the wolves, a lovely sight indeed. His brother thoroughly enjoyed romping in the grass with the wolves and as was evident from what he saw, so did they. The wolves, not interested in chomping down on human flesh, seemed much more civilized, much more interested in maintaining and harbo[u]ring peaceful relations. Tynoly, seeing that his brother certainly didn’t need him to watch, headed towards the wooded area. Upon reaching the first tree, he looked up to examine its height. It was a tall tree.

His neck indicated that it was time to move on from the tree-gazing. Tynoly began to walk deeper into the forest. Not really headed in any particular direction, just walking. He liked to walk. He felt that it was good for him and, because of simple chemistry, it was good for the world, where the world was represented in the trees and plants that surrounded him. As he thought of plants, he decided to get a closer look at one of the plants. He leaned down to one of the plants and noticed a cocoon on one of the leaves.

Upon recognizing that it was a cocoon that seemed to contain life within it, he knelt down to see it clearer. At first thought, he wanted to take the cocoon to a different area, so that he could watch the butterfly emerge from the cocoon in a more comfortable place. Immediately, he knew that was a silly idea and brushed it aside. As he knelt there watching the cocoon, he wondered if there was going to be signs, other than his first inkling, that there was something in it. As if on cue, the cocoon began to shake, indicating that there was something trying to get out.

Tynoly saw a crack and then a small hole begin to emerge from the cocoon. He could see that there was something inside trying to get out. He watched the creature struggle for hours trying to get itself free from the cocoon. Watching in horror, Tynoly decided that he was going to help the creature. He decided that he was going to break open the rest of the cocoon and let it free. As his hands reached for the cocoon, inside his head, he heard a resounding NO!

Initially, the voice was rather startling for Tynoly and as such, he immediately stopped his preliminary actions. Wondering where this voice came from and why it told him not to do what he was going to do… this called for some deep thinking. Tynoly sat back on his heels and really allowed his intellect to chew on this predicament. Why had he been told not to break open the cocoon? What harm could it do? Ohhh, harm to the creature, interesting. As these ideas floated around inside of Tynoly some more, he began to understand that what he was trying to do, help the creature, in fact, would be completely off base had he broke open the cocoon.

Tynoly leaned back onto his feet as he watched the cocoon. All this time while Tynoly had been thinking, the creature had been taking a break from trying to break itself free. Now, the creature was back at it again and Tynoly was watching. He watched as the creature slowly poked part of its body through the hole. In watching what was happening, Tynoly was able to see that as the creature was squeezing its body through the hole, there was fluid that was in the creature’s body that was being pushed from the body to its wings. It was all very interesting to Tynoly, especially as he played out the other scenario.

Had Tynoly not allowed the creature its autonomy to struggle through what looked like an obstacle to Tynoly, then the creature would never have reached its full potential. The creature would never have achieved health! Had Tynoly pulled the creature from what he deemed a terrible situation, the creature would have been forced to live a life of terrible situations. The creature’s body would have retained all of the excess fluid and it would have never been pushed to the wings. The fluid would never have made it to its rightful place in the butterfly’s wings and it would have been hard, for the rest of this creature’s life, to fly.

Tynoly, watching in amazement as the creature made its final push through the whole and became a butterfly. Astonished at his wonderful opportunity to witness the ‘birth’ of a butterfly and realizing that he almost played a part in the role of keeping this beautiful butterfly from reaching its potential. Tynoly was very glad that he didn’t deprive this young butterfly of its struggle for life. This butterfly’s struggle for life is exactly how the butterfly was able to live.