Butterfly and cat

On my undergrad convocation, I was given a folder with my undergrad diploma, and inside it was also a letter from a famous professor from the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. This letter is about a story of a butterfly. Basically, it talks about a butterfly struggling to get out of the cocoon.

So the butterfly struggled for several hours to to its body through a little hold of a cocoon, and a man was observing. And the man decided to take a pair of scissors to help the butterfly get out of it. But the butterfly had a small body and wrinkled wings. And the butterfly could not fly, but for the rest of its life it had to crawl. Apparently, the process of the butterfly struggling to get out of the cocoon is a way to force fluid from the body of the butterfly to is wings so that it can fly.

Basically, the point is that Engineering is a very tough where all students faced many struggles. But the struggles are what we need in life to form our character. 

To a certain extent, this sounds very biblical because suffering and trials are ways in which God refine our faith in Him, making us more dependent on Him, and molding our character to be like Christ. That's why it is considered to be a joy to go through suffering (James 1:2-4 and 1 Peter 1:6-7).

Even though I complained about school many times, I realize that there are many important skills I learned. And it is not so much about the theory of technicalities about the courses, but more in certain sets of skills:

• retaining information in very short amount of time
• managing stress in crunch weeks
• prioritizing among many deliverable (assignments, projects, tasks, exams, etc)
• organizing my time

And now that I am full-time working, I can definitely see the benefits of my education (even though I had very tough days during the process of getting that education, especially a 3 consecutive all-nighter).

This brings me to an anime that is very relaxing, called Aria. It is really relaxing, and it took me a very long time to finish it because I was not able to watch more than 2-3 episodes a day. But the quality of the series is great because it has great character development, neat character interaction (the setting is a character itself), and gorgeous animation.

There is this female gondolier (person who "drives" gondolas) named Alicia who is like the nicest character in all anime history. And she has a fat cat that is kinda dumb. And there is a scene in the cafeteria where she makes the cat deliver a candy to kids from a different table (which is a fairly complex task for the cat). And it takes a while for the cat to deliver the candy. Then another gondolier comes and ask why she is not helping the cat (or at least guiding the cat to the kids' table). Alicia's reply is that even though it might be easier (and take less time) if she helps the cat, she wants the cat to learn and feel rewarded for such difficult task. She believes that's the best for the cat.

School is challenging, and life is very challenging, with much struggles and trials. But we have faith in that God is sovereign over everything and that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). Even though we might not realize at the moment of the trial, God is purposefully using every situation for our own good.