“The greatest lesson of life is that you are responsible for your life.”– Oprah Winfrey
There was a small bird called Siya. She lived with her mother in the nest in a dense forest. While growing up she saw her mother struggle to get food and often saw her mother sleeping empty stomach as she used to feed everything to her. Those sacrifices made Siya dream big, she dreamt to fly high and reach the sky. She wanted to put an end to all the struggles in her mother’s life. She was too young to understand the complexities of life, but that did not stop her to dream big. Whether we achieve or not, one needs to dream and have a goal in their life.
After growing up little, she started thinking about how to save her nest from storms or animals in the forest. Basically, to build a stronger and sustainable nest. She started picking wood pieces, solid branches one by one and made a decent nest, but it was too weak to sustain storms and her nest was broken after a few years.
She was shattered and started crying furiously as for her, the world had come to an end, she had no shelter and now was exposed to storms and animals of that dense Jungle. Her mother had also left for heavenly abode and by then she was all alone, all by her own self to face the real world.
For all these years, her mother used to protect her and get food for her, she was not allowed to go far from the nest and was always told to be in the forest, near the tree, near the nest. For all her life till now, she had only seen that, protection, love, and care.
The only reason Siya was not breaking free and escaping from the jungle as over the time she adopted the belief that it just wasn’t possible.
She was made to face the complexities of the Jungle, strong winds, wild animals, and darkness. Howling voices and continuous attacks on her had shaken her completely. She once thought to surrender herself to animals in Jungle and give up her life, but then sitting on the branch of a tree, she saw a colony of ants, they were climbing the tree, and after reaching a certain point, a strong wind used to knock them down and they again had to start from ground to reach their destination or goal. This happened almost 8-10 times before the ants could reach the place they wanted to go.
She was overwhelmed with the perseverance demonstrated by those ants.
Also Read: Finding Hope in Hopelessness
She then noticed a butterfly cocoon. Siya kept seeing the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Until it suddenly stopped making any progress and looked like it was stuck. A kindhearted man was passing by, he decided to help the butterfly. He took a sharp knife from his tool kit and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly came out of cocoon easily, although it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.
The man didn’t think anything of it and sat there waiting for the wings to enlarge to support the butterfly. But that didn’t happen. The butterfly spent the rest of its life unable to fly, crawling around with tiny wings and a swollen body. Siya also kept watching the butterfly for the next few days. Despite the kind heart of the man, he didn’t understand that the restricting cocoon and the struggle needed by the butterfly to get itself through the small opening; were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings. To prepare itself for flying once it was out of the cocoon.
That moment and incident was a game-changer for Siya, her life now had new hope, she understood that our struggles in life develop our strengths. Without struggles, we never grow and never get stronger, so it’s important for us to tackle challenges on our own, and not be relying on help from others.
She then built her nest again, this time stronger and at a relatively safer place. She started seeing all the beautiful things in her life and started counting her blessings. After all, she had wings and was not crippled like that butterfly. She chose to fight back and roar, soar high in the sky, this time not only to dream but to achieve.
In our lives too, we experienced such situations, Siya, Ants or Butterfly, they are nothing but reflections of phases of our lives, the dejection felt on losing your loved ones, bullying, attacks, struggles, disappointment, a threat to self-respect, integrity, etc. we all face these somewhere or the other in our lives and we would be lying if we don’t agree that those were some of the lowest points in our life and suicidal or negative thoughts did come to us then.
Our struggles in life develop our strengths. Without struggles, we never grow and never get stronger, so it’s important for us to tackle challenges on our own, and not be relying on help from others. No matter how much the world tries to hold you back, always continue with the belief that what you want to achieve is possible. Believing you can become successful is the most important step in achieving it.
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One such incident which always inspires me is the story of my friend Varsha, who has fought all odds her in life courageously and today is an inspiration for many women like us; unlike other women, she did not give up on her life but used her best skills and abilities to come out of hardships of her life and start a business of her own.
Usually, women are devastated after facing financial crunches and challenges in life.
But Varsha was some of the other kinds, a self-sustainable, confident, hard-working woman who just used her skills and craft taught by her grandmom to start her business of organic handloom, with just few thousand in her pocket.
Today she is living her dream and not only fulfilling her own needs of raising her child single-handedly, she empowers other women too like her, “UV” in ”UV Creations“stands for ultraviolet which means finer collection and it also has Initials of both her and her son –“Udeep and Varsha”.
She is one living example of how women can empower themselves if they have vision and courage.
Her business gives livelihood to rural women, takes care of the environment, and protects are the cultural heritage of rich and fine textiles. Kudos to Varsha’s hard work and determination. To sum up, below are a few famous lines to summarize.
“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drowned your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs
About Abhrekha Jain Sahlot-
Meet Abhrekha Jain Sahlot, the name is derivative of her parent’s name ( Abhay & Rekha). Always “16” at heart, she is full of life, energy, and enthusiasm. A gold medalist computer engineer she has been working with top MNC for over 12 years now. A doting mother of 2 boys and loving daughter, sister & a wife, life has given her various opportunities to explore and she seems to have taken the best of everything. From singing, painting to acting, swimming, and basketball, she has been into various co-curricular activities from artistic ones to the sports ones.
However, currently, she enjoys sharing her blessings with fellow women by addressing women and parenting forums and helping women in her capacity and spread message & the importance of being happy & content!
Read Storizen Magazine July 2020 here
