Looking Through Candy Eyes: Hope For the Flowers

The only way is to go up.

Hope for the Flowers is a 1973 children's book written by Trina Paulus. It is about the story of a caterpillar named Stripe who has lived normally for his entire life. Everything he did is as expected from a caterpillar: eating and growing bigger. But then Stripe got tired of his routinary life and though that maybe there is more to life than eating. He took a leap of faith and left the tree he considerered as his home. Stripe wandered around trying to explore what was around him and trying to learn and absorb everything he could. He was amazed with the things he saw but he still feels like there is something more to explore, that life has something more to offer. Then he found a caterpillar pillar rising up the sky with the top impossible to see. He was so curious about it thgat he wanted to go up and see for himself the top of the pillar. That became his goal which turned into frustration. He met another caterpillar named Yellow in the pillar. Yellow wants to climb the pillar as well but she feels bad about stepping on the other caterpillars and huurting them. Stripe and Yellow was so frustrated that they could not reach the top. Then they saw a butterfly and they had an idea that maybe they were meant to fly. Yellow realized that they need to be a butterfly and fly to satisfy their curiosity and be able to live a full life. Yellow and Stripe got separated. Stripe was deeply saddened when they got separated. He longed for Yellow so much. On the other hand, Yellow built a cocoon and became a butterfly. Stripe then saw Yellow and built a cocoon so they can be together and fly together. The book ended up Stripe and Yellow flying together.

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. And also to be with the arms of the one we love.