One day, he met Beetle and said, "How ugly this earth is, full of dust and rubbish strewn all over the floor."
Beetle said to him, "Its all in how and where you look at it," and went on his way. The caterpillar thought about it but still couldn't see how the world could look nice at all.
The next day, while the caterpillar was chewing away on some leaves, Dragonfly happened to pass by and the caterpillar complained once more.
"I don't understand why the earth has to be so disgusting and boring, with all the droppings and dead things covering its surface."
"Well, that's because you're only looking at that side of it," said Dragonfly, and off he flew. The caterpillar was starting to get annoyed that there was no one who seemed to agree with what he thought.
Not too long later, after gaining some weight and starting to feel a bit slower in his movement, the caterpillar chanced upon Bee collecting some honey and said, "This world is makes me sick. All there is to do is eat and everyday I go through the same routine in the same ol' place. How come you're still so hard at work gathering honey all the time, Bee?"
Bee, without pricking his head up as he continued with his honey-harvesting, said, "Once you get to see what I see from a higher view of this world and you realize that what you do DOES make a difference in its own small ways, you begin to live with more reason and life becomes... plain wonderful! Sorry but I have to go now. More honey to collect!" And off the busy Bee went.
The caterpillar got very frustrated and decided to separate himself from the ugly world for a while so he started weaving himself a cocoon.
Days turned to night while the caterpillar lay in his cocoon, constantly wondering, "What is the problem with those people? There must be something wrong with their eyes to see anything worth being delighted about in this world."
Then, one fine day, after having been cooped up in his cocoon for a long time, the caterpillar decided to give the world another chance again. He broke out of his cocoon. He did not realize that he had wings and was now a butterfly. So, he walked about his little plant-house and still could only see the floor strewn with dead, dry twigs and leaves in the middle of spring.
After a while, the butterfly felt something flapping behind him and was shocked to find a pair of brightly coloured, beautiful wings behind his back.
"Oh my! What pretty wings I have! I shall try them out right now!"
And off he went, flapping his wings furiously. He rose two feet of the ground, then five, then ten...
Suddenly, he was looking at the whole garden that he always crawled around, but this time from twenty feet up. He gazed in wonder at the blossoming tulips in the meadow just a bit to the right of his plant-house.
"Where did that come from?" He wondered.
Then he flapped around a bit and saw the boulevard of trees just beyond the fence separating his garden, lush with flowers of all colours covering the trees.
"How did I miss that?"
The butterfly was totally dumbfounded.
Only at this time did he recall the words of Beetle, Dragonfly and Bee.
"It all looks different up here. I've been missing out on all the wonders around because I've only been looking at everything that isn't nice on the ground. I'm glad I've managed to change my perspective now and to get a butterfly's-eye view of everything. I NEVER want to go back to looking at things from down there anymore."
So the butterfly started living life with a higher and broader perspective and everything seemed to make more sense to him thereafter.
THE END
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