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There's a story about Winston Churchill giving a commencement address.
Instead of giving a sixty-minute dissertation that no one would remember, he just repeated these words. "Never give up, never give up, never give up." Then he sat down.

That's exactly what the Monarch does. It never gives up.
It has to make a trip from the New England states to central Mexico -- thousands of miles. A trip most people would call impossible for a tiny insect.

What is also great about their trip is that they don't go exactly in a straight line. The trip, as the crow flies, is about two thousand miles. The trip as the butterfly flies is probably closer to three thousand miles. Some times it flies west, sometimes it flies south, sometimes the wind blows so hard it pushes it back up north. It never goes in exactly the right direction. It's zigging and zagging, and doing the best it can. It's making corrections every day to it's course, but it never gives up.

That's a great lesson we all can learn.
It's ok to make mistakes; it's ok to get off course; it's ok to wander a bit, as long as you try to keep moving in the right direction and don't give up.

Vince Lombardi once said, "Failure is not in getting knocked down, but in failing to get back up." You will get knocked down in life. Life’s not fair and doesn’t care if you a nice person or not. But as the song says, “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.”

Do you think think you could make a trip of three thousand miles in three months from Maine to a specific mountain in Mexico, without a map, without a car, on your own, unable to ask directions, without ever having been there before? Not likely. I know I couldn't do it. But, the Monarch butterfly does it every year.

The monarchs trip is also a commitment to everyday progress. The butterfly can't say to itself, "Oh no, three thousand miles. I'll never make it, it's too far." No, it just starts out, trusting it's fate to the world.
Everyday, trying to make it quota of 33 miles.

You know the old saying, "How can you eat an elephant? The answer is . "One bite at a time." You can make almost any goal if you break it down into bite size pieces.

If butterflies can make this tremendous journey, we can too, if we don't give up.

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