Be A Butterfly

We will all encounter a traumatic event at least once. It may be a death, job loss, or many other things. Suffering is intertwined with the human experience, yet we still try to escape it instead of facing it. Some of us seem to weather the storm better than others, but it is not simple to answer why. There are a lot of different factors that affect how we deal with a traumatic event, and the answers are forever evolving. One solid fact remains: We will never be the same person we were before the traumatic event again. Perhaps we are limiting our healing by attempting to do so.

Though suffering is painful, the flip side is that it propels us to transform. When we lose someone close it is a great loss, but with every shakeup, there is also a chance to take the pieces and shape them into something that makes us happy. The trouble may start when we try to put things back together where we thought they were before.

It is a difficult search for meaning in life after a person has gone through suffering, but ultimately, how someone turns out at the end is really up to them. You can respond to a personal loss by letting yourself sleep in all day, quitting your job, and binge-watching Netflix. On the other hand, a person can react by starting a new hobby to refocus, volunteering somewhere, and being mindful of their mental health. Sometimes the response is a mixture of both. There is no road map for how we deal with putting the pieces back together, and no one can tell anyone how it has to be handled. There are guidelines, of course, but the guidelines are subject to change.

We derail ourselves from becoming a butterfly because instead of focusing on who we are now, we focus on trying to be who we were before. The error in this approach is that we can never be who we were before as that past us did not have the information that we have now. The experience of the event changes us.

Rather than assembling the pieces of yourself back into the old mold, find a new mold that you like and focus on what is needed to make that mold a reality. You can be whatever you want. After all, you did survive that situation. You can do anything. Let yourself learn from the pain, and evolve from it. Oftentimes, letting yourself experience and deal with the pain will lead to finding new meaning in life.

If we believe that life is a journey, then that journey includes the adversity we face. We should not expect ourselves to be the same at the journey’s end as when we started. We should not limit ourselves by trying to be who we were before, but let ourselves evolve.