Walking through a meadow of flowers is one of the most beautiful experiences we can experience in nature. The elegant fragrance in the air, the ecstatic bees hovering around the flowers and the gentle breeze on which the flowers drift; a paradise indeed! It’s not a big surprise that a gift of a bouquet cheers us up without an exception.
But do the flowers bloom all the time in nature? Why aren’t we privileged to walk through a meadow every day? More importantly, would the experience still retain the same significance if it was available at all times? Probably no. It’s the very absence of flowers for the rest of the year, that enhances our feelings for this experience. It’s almost as if we are celebrating the event, the anticipation, for the flowers to bloom again after many months of nothingness.
The reason I am pointing out nothingness is that that’s the perception many of us have. This nothingness includes the falling of leaves, the cold winter, the rains; sometimes scattered, sometimes incessant. Nothing seems to change over time. But soon after the winter is over and the spring begins, the flowers bloom. In all fairness, the seemingly useless snow and the water in the rains get stored by the soil and then almost as if the soil waits patiently for the right time to grow the flowers! Now that’s one way of looking at it, isn’t it?
Similarly, we often term many aspects of daily lives as nothingness. Even though we are soaking in ‘the rain’. The growth of flowers at this stage, being invisible, can easily demoralize us from soaking in the water anymore. To be more precise, in the pursuit of our goals, the lack of visible growth or results can demoralize us from taking in any more pressure, commitment to stick to certain plans and indulging in activities that can be best termed as ‘slacking-off’.
Nothing seems to change at all for a week or even for months until the right time comes. But when it does, all the change in the world is visible! Only then one realizes why it was necessary to dig in deep every day possible, even when there wasn’t even the slightest of progress visible. Again, stressing on the term ‘visible’ because there is always gradual progress taking place that may be invisible to our eyes but is not invisible in the grand scheme of things!
If you look at the lives or listen to the talks of the Olympians or the Nobel Prize winners or the scientists, you’ll always notice that they almost always love to talk about their struggles and the challenges they overcame consistently. These are the memories they not only cherish but also proudly brand as the milestones of their lives. And honestly, you don’t even need to look at their lives. If you try to remember what made you proud of yourself; are the great heroics of you, when you conquered that challenge that you never thought you’d!
How you overcame the fear of public speaking on the stage, how you set to increase your speed over many days to lap at some desired time, how you sat to program and didn’t even seem to achieve a thing that very day but it invisibly made inroads to where you stand today!
We need the challenges in life to make it more meaningful! And if it feels that even after reaching a stage, you still face new challenges, that only means you are in a highly growing environment! These challenges are the rains that your need to soak in every day to enjoy walking through the meadows and tell a story that you are truly proud of to the world!
The next time you see the flowers, not only would you love them but also admire them and the plant for all that it has endured delivering!
So, how much are you willing to soak in today?
I’m still enjoying my rainy days, I hope to see the flowers blossom soon.