Butterflies in Stomach

Your teacher asks you to walk to the stage. Your task, deliver a speech. The audience are waiting. Suddenly you begin to feel nervous. Your mouth gets dry. Your knees shake. You have a strange experience of a bunch butterflies fluttering in your tummy!

This is” Butterflies in the stomach”, an expression to describe the fluttery feeling one experiences under special or unexpected situations. It is a normal happening in both the children and adults. But, if it happens too frequently, it means one is experiencing anxiety problems. You need to get out of them as quickly as possible to lead a normal healthy life.

Imagine yourself as a butterfly caterpillar that has just hatched out of the egg. For the young caterpillar the world around may appear quite awesome. A sudden shift from an enclosed egg to an open hostile environment may be full of surprises. But it simply accepts the challenge.

It eats the very leaf on which it has hatched. With three pairs of legs to crawl, coloration and bad odor of its skin for protection from predators, and biting type of mouth parts, the caterpillar is tailor made to go about its job.

It wastes no time and starts biting and eating leaf after leaf. It grows in size by shedding its skin two or three times. In about 3 to 4 weeks, it attains maximum growth. It then moves to a convenient spot, preferably a twig. There it anchors itself with its last pair of legs and hangs upside down for nearly 15 hours.

If we want to stay that long upside down, we need practice, endurance and most importantly a strong will and determination.

While hanging upside down, the caterpillar begins to shed its skin very neatly and skillfully to become the pupa which is the next stage in the life history of butterfly. It completes its work with text book precision.

Caterpillar is a great example of completing a task undaunted and without nervousness. No butterflies in its stomach!!!