Appreciate the Struggles

I heard something so profound today that I had to share it.

Where I work we had a White Dove releasing ceremony this morning for National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. The released doves represented and honored the victims we serve. The man who owns the doves told us that when he first began this work, when he saw the baby doves showing signs of hatching, he would often help them by ever so gently cracking open the egg-shell. The next day, those assisted doves died.

What he discovered is a lesson for living–and succeeding in–life.

He said that in order for the baby doves to survive, it’s necessary for them to go through the struggle and the work of pecking away at the egg in order to strengthen their muscles, particularly their neck muscles, to survive once outside the egg.

How true that is for all of us, not just the doves. While we all need assistance from time to time, there’s a difference between helping someone who cannot do it–whatever “it” happens to be–on their own and doing for another what they can do for themselves with some hard work. Taking that away from them is taking away an opportunity for growth.

It’s the struggles in life that give us insight and strength, that teach us perseverance and that give us the skills and knowledge to assist those who truly need help, so that they, too, may gain skills and knowledge during their struggle to assist yet another.

May our struggles not go unappreciated. Let’s recognize them for what they are–an opportunity to strengthen our spirituality; an opportunity to strengthen our muscles that we may thrive; an opportunity to use them for good, to help one another become the best person, community, country, we can possibly be; an opportunity to learn surrender which leads to freedom; and an opportunity to learn appreciation. After all, what we acquire by hard work holds more significance that what is simply and easily handed to us. It’s through the trials that we learn, and what we learn is where we acquire growth and strength.

And I’m off on the last leg of the journey to the Camp NaNoWriMo finish line. 🙂