Cheerful little critters, right?
I spent an hour or so tending to our pansies today, giving them a little haircut. It is said that pansies 'like' to have their old, drooping flowers picked off. This simply ensures that they direct their energy toward growing new leaves and flowers.
While gently plucking away old flowers, I got to thinking about life. (Funny how gardening does that.) And I found some similarities between life and pansies.
Sometimes we hold onto to things beyond the point of reason; closed doors, dead ideas, wilting opportunities, draining friendships. We focus all our attention on feeding life and energy into dead-end avenues, leaving us too drained to nourish the new, the important, even the necessary-to-survive. It takes a special kind of perception to identify the wilting flowers in our lives, and then a whole lot of courage to pluck those flowers out.
Of course, poor perception can lead to mistakes. I accidentally mistook some new budding pansies for old flowers, and found that I had pulled a few out before they'd had opportunity to blossom. Likewise in life - and it happens to all of us - we can burn bridges, cut people off, close doors... and only in hindsight discover our error in judgment. Unlike pansies, one can sometimes correct what was lost. Reconcile. Re-open. Re-start. Often though, the damage is irreparable, and one must move on, and apply oneself to growing brand new flowers.
I know I'm not the only one. But whatever mistakes we've made, may they only teach us to exam our flowers with more care before plucking them out. And to get rid of those that are blatantly sucking the life out of us.
May you have a cheerful, sun-shining-on-your-face week!
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