Bloom Wherever Planted: cliché, isn’t it. But can I get away with it if I am named after a flower? Well, I am going to run with it if you’ll be kind enough to indulge me, dear reader. I know the cliché typically goes “bloom where you are planted” but that sounds a bit like you have no control as if someone picks you up and plops you back down somewhere else. While this may be the case, I would rather refer to this old adage in a way that gives a bit more agency to the individual. Ergo, bloom wherever planted.
If we are brave enough, and if our life’s path calls us to pursue different things in different places, there will be times when we are uprooted. We will be challenged to send our tendrils outwards and find ways to turn our petals and leaves toward the sun.
If we are brave enough, and if our life’s path calls us to pursue different things in different places, there will be times when we are uprooted. We will be challenged to send our tendrils outwards and find ways to turn our petals toward the sun.
This isn’t always easy, as we may have become comfortable with our roots sunk into familiar soil. Perhaps we’re grown content with our little corner. We know where the sun will come from, we know where the other flowers are in relation to us, yes, we think we know what to expect. But when uprooted, everything changes. What a time of discomfort, but what a time of imagination and possibility!
Whenever I am uprooted, I tend to crave safety, security, and stability. Those three things are nearly impossible to obtain right out of the starting gate. I forget to have patience. I always forget that it takes time to uncoil and unfurl, to have enough trust to sink into the soil.
I want to rush the process, I want everything to be (or at least to feel) perfect immediately. It is that expectation that creates suffering. Upon arriving here to the island, I entered not just a new work environment but an entirely new world, one in which everyone already felt tightly knitted together. I experienced the normal fears of the average human, fear of being rejected, of not fitting in, of not being happy here. I felt unstable and uncertain. Fortunately, as is not always the case, everyone here was kind and wanted to accept me into the fold. It was a miraculous process of a metaphorical “group hug” happening to me the first few days after I arrived. My fears waned over the course of a week and I could feel myself begin to exhale the tightly held breath I had kept locked in my chest.
The universe has a wonderful way of teaching me the same lesson over and over again. It is with trust, and with the exhale of expectation that you are able to release those tightly bound petals and begin to bloom. You cannot rush this process. Contentment will come, not when it is called, only when it is time.
No matter the soil, in time and with trust, you will bloom.
