I look forward to each morning to see flowers in our garden and it is common to have a few flowers each day, fully open, which were only buds in the previous few days.
Each of the rose flowers above looks different from each other when they are open. They are distinct in colour, complexion, petal formation and fragrance.
I find watching the buds go through the process of opening to be a flower, interesting and intriguing. Sometimes I spend time watching the different stages of transitions in a bud, because of the tangible changes one can see each day. From being a bud, to become a flower, the time taken is unpredictable.
The following are a few photos of buds in different stages of becoming fully open.
On one day I noticed a bud which stayed restrained and did not go beyond what is in the photo below. The petals fell off after a few days without the bud fully opening to be a flower. It lived its life as a semi-open flower!
This phenomenon caught my attention during the day while I was listening to the story of a person, who told me that he suffered as a child due to the extremely difficult circumstances at home. This made him to grow up avoiding social contacts, public events and trustful friendships. He lives under the burden of the memories of festering emotional wounds. As a teacher, he finds it difficult to listen to the hurting stories of children, as such stories take him back to his personal disappointments and grief.
The Bud above suffered an injury, which led to a scarring in the petals, and adherence to each other, which denied it to open to be a flower.
The gentle man, whose story I shared above also remained scarred unable to grow up to be an adult with the usual flavour and enthusiasm to live fully. His was a diminished outlook to life and a reduced emotional world of relationships.
I have some rose plants in the garden which I planted to remember gratefully the people who brought blessings. I have also some pants to remember a few, with whom I have had strained relationships, with whom I continue to search for a reconciled state.
It is only when we are aware of our gains and losses, we can integrate the gains to feel full, grateful, humble and reciprocal and the losses to be signs posts for living with hope, peace, mindfulness and forgiveness.
It was while watching this open flower and a butterfly receiving its supply of nectar, I got an enlarged dimension of the meaning of openness.
Each of us has something abundant, rich and unique in our lives. Even our hurts can prepare us to be 'wounded healers'. Our blessings and insights can be pathfinders for others.
Our life is a resource for leading us to a growing experience and a becoming a means of providing comfort to others.
For both of these, an unfolding experience of openness to ourselves to process the cluttered story of our lives, is necessary. The three leading questions to start us on this journey are: What are the recurrent thoughts when I become silent inwardly? What among these are causing me to stay preoccupied in the past? What is one thing that I can do to be freed form this orientation.
It is good if this journey into the mystery of one's inner life is facilitated by a friend, so that we feel protected from an emotional unsteadiness arising out of this. When we visit our past, beyond the initial pain or sense of loss would be the opening to a new path of freedom and fullness. Is not the water calm below about fifteen feet, in a sea of waves!
Within us is an oasis of peace, when we allow this debriefing to lead us to be ready to 'let go'!
The flower is open to fulfil its mission of being a nectar provider.
Our life is for experiencing the joy of living and making a space for others, to feel renewed by our comforting presence in their lives!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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