BLOOM
It’s spring here in South Africa and I’ve been delighted by the new growth in my garden now that the weather is finally warming up. The new beds are filling in, the butterflies have been visiting and the first flowers are opening wide. Looking ahead to later in the summer, we’ve just planted the dahlia bulbs, and it’s got me thinking.
These bulbs are particularly large and quite ugly. They are a bit shriveled, dry and dull brown with wizened tops and maybe a few wispy roots left here and there at the other end. They do not in any way, shape or form look like they could possibly contain the potential for the multitude of gorgeous flowers which will bloom in a couple month’s time. And yet, with water and sunny days, they will transform beautifully with little encouragement on my part.
It turns out I have a lot in common with these gnarled objects we’ve been burying in the ground recently. I wish I’d known that I, too, carried the promise of so much more than the painfully shy and very skinny little girl with red cateye glasses and a pixie cut I once was could even imagine. Growing up on a narrow strip of sandy beach, wide marshes and soft needled pine trees, I had no idea that I would grow into my own hidden gifts in a way that would take me to the other side of the world. And I certainly would not have believed that I would speak publicly to people all over the planet through a tiny rectangle which fits in my pocket. I don’t know that anyone else saw all this in me, back then, either.
And yet here I am. Blooming wildly at a time in my life I was always taught to expect would mean slowing down in a very big way.
I wonder if this is true for you, too – perhaps for many of us. The world has changed, people live far longer and some of us choose to take better care of ourselves in myriad ways. All that is true. And yet, I think it’s far more than that, this bursting into full bloom.
I think we are realizing we are meant for more. That we carry so much potential for beauty, for courage, for living our lives fully and well. There’s a Mexican proverb I love, “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”, which sums it up nicely. And maybe, rather than tiny seeds, we are actually big ugly bulbs. The divine in an ordinary, unexceptional container. Maybe we were always meant to bloom now. Maybe this is our time.
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