2014-06-16

One afternoon, I saw three healthy caterpillars carefully clinging on the leaves of a very healthy plant. Each of the caterpillars was fiesting on every leaf that they could lay their legs on. I was impressed on how hard they work to survive. The three of them were busy munching the leaves, not leaving a single part uneaten. They were enjoying what they were doing, not minding that someone was closely looking at them. Slowly the leaves were losing their shape, leaving behind only their stalks. A few minutes after, the once healthy and beautiful plant loses its shape. Her beauty is gone, totally wasted. The caterpillars continue their way to satisfy their needs. Enjoying every single moment of it.

Amazed with what I had just witnessed, I couldn't help but think on what these caterpillars represent in my life or in anyone elses. These caterpillars could be anyone around us. In general, they are the people who are pulling us down through their actions and through their thoughts. It's our nature that we entertain these people in our life hoping that we could either help them or they could help us as we face our own demons. As we continue dealing with these people, we are slowly losing our self control, our sense of distinguishing the good from bad, from what is right to what is wrong. Slowly, we are being eaten by their dramas. In the end we can no longer identify what is right and what is wrong. The worst is the fact that we could no longer identify who we really are. These can also be the material things that we aspire to but are too difficult to achieve no matter how hard we try to achieve it. Of course we convince ourselves that these material things should not be the means to our happiness, but sometimes it's just too difficult to deny that we are being affected. We then start asking "Why can't I have just one of those things?". We work our butts off hoping that someday we can find happiness on those glittering, precious things. But again, it's just too difficult to get hold of it. The more we are expose to these so called "caterpillars", the more we become vulnerable to pain and insecurities. We can be either unaware that they are controlling us or we continue to let them control our life until such time that we realized that their presence is totally beyond our control. They give us the reason to be angry, to be full of pride or to remain unforgiving, to let us stay out of focus, to let us lose our self-confidence or to let us feel that they are better than us. We may try to stay away from them, but somehow their presence are pulling us down, draining us of what we have. They are the blood suckers in our life. They are slowly eating everything that we have until nothing is left with us, even our pride.

Don't let these caterpillars stay in your life. Try to ignore them, get away with it and as much as possible don't let yourself be engulfed with their harmful presence. Once they are finished sucking your blood and are satisfied, they'll just give up on you leaving behind traces of how they just ruined your life.

(All caterpillars are left unharmed, in fact they are now somewhere maybe fiesting on another healthy plant.)