Against Resistance
Wings form in the struggle ... so do we
"The only way out – is through."
- Robert Frost
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There’s an old story about a man who found the cocoon of an emperor moth and carried it home to watch the moth break free.
For hours he watched it work. The moth pushed against the silk, gained a little, rested, pushed again. Then it seemed to stall. It had forced its head and part of its body through a small opening, and there it stayed, straining against the same stubborn inch of cocoon, going nowhere.
The man couldn’t stand it. He found a pair of scissors, snipped the cocoon the rest of the way open, and the moth slipped out with ease.
But something was wrong. Its body was swollen and its wings were small and crumpled, folded against its back like wet paper. He waited for them to spread and stiffen and catch the air the way wings are supposed to. They never did. The moth spent its short life crawling, dragging a body those wings were never able to lift, and it died a few days later, having never flown.
The man had been kind. That’s the part worth sitting with. He wasn’t lazy or careless — he watched a living thing strain against something hard, and he wanted to spare it. So he took the struggle away. And the struggle was the one thing the moth could not afford to lose. The work of pushing through that narrow opening was the work that readied those wings for flight. Cut the cocoon, and you get a moth that cannot fly.
Every one of us has held those scissors.
It’s answering the question before the kid has finished struggling toward the answer themselves. Or grabbing the tool out of their hands to show them the “right” way because watching them fumble it is almost physically hard. Maybe it’s quietly lowering expectations because we’d rather they succeed at something than learn what it costs to fall short. None of that comes from a bad place. It comes from caring. That’s exactly why it’s so hard to stop.
And sometimes the cocoon we cut is our own. We let the machine do the hard thinking and call it efficiency, when what we’ve handed away are the reps that would have made us sharper. A tool can be a partner you grow alongside, or a pair of scissors you reach for to skip the struggle. It’s the same tool, but the difference is whether you’re still doing the work.
Most of us don’t set out to hold anyone back. We set out to help — to be available, to remove the obstacle, to make the day a little easier for the people counting on us. That’s a good instinct. But good instincts can drift over time if we don’t keep them in check.
Next thing we know, we step in a little too fast, a little too often, and the help starts doing the quiet work of the scissors. People stop wrestling with the problem and building the strength to carry what should be their responsibility.
People grow the way the moth’s wings do — against resistance. Confidence, judgment, the nerve to make a hard call are built by working through the strain. The steadiest groups are the ones where people are trusted with hard things, and support shows up at the right moment rather than at the first sign of struggle. Enough support to feel safe with enough room to get strong.
The most generous thing we can offer someone might be your belief that they can do the difficult thing in front of them … and then the restraint to stand back and let them. That belief is its own kind of energy and tells others, “You can do it. I have faith in you.”
What are you stepping in to fix that someone in your care needs to work through on their own?
"The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor the person perfected without trials."
- Chinese Proverb
Connecting this quote to the story. Like the moth's struggle to emerge from the cocoon is essential for its development and ability to fly, so are trials and challenges necessary for personal growth.
This week’s Chasing Influence tip: Before you solve the problem for someone, ask whether the struggle is harming them or helping them grow.