The Cocoon of Embrace: The only Way to Go Up

The Cocoon of Embrace: The Only Way to Go Up

"Hope for the Flowers" is a story about a caterpillar, Stripe, who was born in this world and lived a normal life as expected from a caterpillar: eating and growing bigger. However, he became tired of doing such routine over and over again and thought that there must be something more to life. So he left the tree which served as his home from the very start and went out to the world to wander. Yes, he was fascinated with things he saw, but he was unsatisfied, until he found a caterpillar pillar rising up the sky with the top impossible to see. He wanted to go up also and reach the peak of the pillar, and that goal became a frustration. He was eager to reach that goal: the top.

Stripe has a goal: to reach the top of the pillar, and that makes him similar to each one of us. We have a particular goal in life: to attain perfect happiness. Just like Stripe, who gets tired of his everyday routine, we also get tired of what we keep on doing and thinks that there must be something more to life out there. We wanted to go out and discover, to find out something interesting, to find the most perfect thing that would satisfy us. Well in this case, the most perfect material thing, because once we get that thing, we would still eventually be unsatisfied, just like Stripe when he found things that was fascinating, yet unsatisfying.

The most perfect goal would be perfect happiness, and just like what stripe thought, we will find the perfect happiness on the top, up there where we came from, up there where we always wanted to be: beside God, in the arms that nurtured us from the very beginning.

So Stripe joined the caterpillar pillar, pushing another caterpillar, stepping on another, with that goal in mind: the top. But just like anybody else, Stripe doesn't know what's at the top, he's not sure what is exactly at the top, but one thing's for sure: whatever that's up there, he would be very happy to find out.

Like every one of us, we wanted to go up there, but of course, at the first glance one wouldn't realize how. He would be in haste to achieve it, never stopping first to think. We do things, and we think that what we do is the good way to achieve that goal. We become oblivion that there is a single way given to us to achieve that goal. Many know that way and follow it, but others are ignorant. However, there are others who know it but they act as if they don't know that way. They walk in a road different from that road given to us. Life would be easy if we would only follow that road readily given to us by God Himself.

Stripe met Yellow on his way up. He somehow fell in love with Yellow and they decided to go back down to where they came from and live every day with each other, they decided to go back to the start and live life together, finding a way to the happiness they thought they will see in each other. However, Stripe became tired again of what the two of them keep on doing. This is a manifestation of what is common to every people: they find things that they thought would make them happy, but still they are not, and they would go back to what they wanted from the very beginning: to be up there, up where each and every one of us belongs.

Stripe has the hope to go up to the very top and find out what's up there. Once he had that hope, he had the determination, but his problem was that he didn't have the way to reach the top. The most apparent way was to squeeze himself in the caterpillar pillar and be able to go to the top by going with the flow. And the problem here is ignorance. There is really a way to reach the top, but that way is not to go with the flow of the majority. Stripe is ignorant that to reach the top, he must be able to fly. He is ignorant that caterpillars like him can change to a very beautiful butterfly. And once he changes, he can now go up there and find out what is really in store for all of them who wanted to know what's on the goal.

Upon reading the story, the reader would think that if only Stripe became patient and tried to understand Yellow he mustn't have to go that hard way to reach the top. If only he stayed with Yellow, then he might have known that caterpillars can change to butterflies and will be able to fly. Stripe was carried away with his desire. If only he stopped and thought of a way to go up there, things would've been easier for him. He must have realized that there is a way aside from that way presented in front of him. There is a way, and most of the caterpillars are unaware of it. If only they stayed back and thought, if only they did.

And just like us, we have a goal--to achieve perfect happiness in heaven--we have what is needed in us to be able to reach that goal--hope and determination--but we lack one thing--the way to go up there. There are many ways presented to us, and these many ways are confusing, we don't know what road to take, we don't know what to do. Well,