Welcome to the Daily Chizuk. People go through struggles in life, but later on, we often hear them say, “Going through that struggle made me the person I am today.” It’s hard to see the benefits during the struggle, but we always have to remember: Hashem is trying to build us into great people.
Someone once asked me, “I don’t understand. I want to learn Torah so badly, but it’s so difficult for me. Firstly, I have people opposing me. Secondly, my schedule between work and school is so hard and difficult. I only have time to learn for an hour, maybe two a day. Why does Hashem make it so difficult? I’m trying to do the right thing.” And I told him, “Maybe it’s because it’s so difficult that you want it so badly. And maybe if it were easy, you wouldn’t value it as much.” Now you take everything. You take everything. You take every second that you have to learn so seriously. It’s actually the challenge that’s making you so strong.
I once read a little essay about a man who found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day, while he was looking at it, he noticed a small opening, and he sat there for several hours watching as the butterfly struggled to force its body through the little hole. But it came to a halt, and it appeared as if it had got as far as it could and could go no further. So the man, feeling bad for it, took a pair of scissors and snipped off the rest of the cocoon. It came out easily, but it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand, be able to support its body, and the butterfly would fly. But nothing happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled legs, and it was never able to fly. The man, in his kindness, didn’t understand that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were Hashem’s way of forcing fluid from the butterfly’s body to its wings so that it would be ready for flight. Sometimes the struggles are exactly what we need in life to be able to soar.
There was a story going around after Hurricane Sandy about a strip of houses in Lakewood. They were all built the same way, with the same landscaping, and they all had the same big tree in front of the houses. During the storm, a few of the trees fell and a few didn’t. The people couldn’t understand. The trees were all the exact same size and the same shape, and the wind hit them at the same angle. Why did some fall and some didn’t? After investigating, they found the answer. It was the trees with the built-in sprinkler systems that fell, and the other trees didn’t. The trees without the sprinklers had to extend their roots deep into the ground to find nutrients. Because they had to struggle, they became so strong and were able to survive. It’s the struggles that build us. It’s the struggles that make us great people. Have a great day.