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| (24 January 2012, 5:00 pm, Falaj Hazaa, Al Ain, UAE) |
Today, I wanted to share about a rose.
I was leisurely experiencing the chill of the afternoon breeze while waiting for my transport service today, when I saw a rose on the road side.
The rose plant was prominent for the reason that it's the only flowering plant in that area...the only attraction, if I may say, amidst the dull, wilting weeds around.
As I was savouring that sense of bliss that the rose endowed me at that moment, a question came up to me: What does it take to grow such a beautiful rose? And, just in a split of a second, Bette Midler's song started playing back in my mind's ears:
Just remember, in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed
That with the sun's love
In the spring
Becomes the rose
That rose before me...that rose, which at that specific fraction of time eased away the anxieties of my day...that rose which beauty I prized...used to be a seed that lies beneath the ground. It used to be away from sight. It was never there.
Probably, as I used to walk on the same grounds where the rose is planted now, I might have had stepped on that same seed without me even knowing it.
But now, that seed---helpless, lifeless, still, dull, mute, unrecognized, hidden--has metamorphosed into a rose--bold, colorful, vibrant, cherished, famed. We might ask why or how but these don't matter anymore. What matters is it did!
This reality about the rose is not that far from the reality about people.
Sometimes, we tend to box people...label them...place them within the bounds of our conception about them...define them. At times, we tend to look at people but don't really see them. We view them at a specific present but see their past, in a way like what I was talking about on my earlier post about the "cookie-napper".
We tend to look at people as though we are looking at the rose but, deep within our hearts, we are actually seeing the seed.
This is a fundamental error that we, humans, commonly commit--knowingly or unknowingly.
When we start looking at the rose but see the seed, we fail to appreciate the beauty of the rose and only see the dullness of the seed. In this case, we are missing a lot!
This reminds me further of Viktor Frankl who talked about how our perception about a person matters in his or her own search for meaning.
When we look at people and all we see is their past--not what they are capable of--we are guilty of hampering their growth. When we look at people and the foremost we see are their faults yesterday, a day before or a year ago, we are guilty of not allowing them reach their utmost potential. Why? Simply because, in our minds, we have already programmed that they will never be able to achieve what they are supposed to become.
In my life, I realized that, most of the times, the only thing people need to progress--to get out of that constricted seed where they are and bloom into a fully-functioning individual--is trust...genuine, authentic trust, from people they care for and work with, that they will be able to solve their own problems and that they are worth all the efforts and time people around are spending with and for them.
For a seed, it takes sun's love to make it flower and grow. The same is required for people--genuine love, which goes with trust, respect, care and value. If we provide enough of this to people, in time, they'll grow to become the most beautiful rose they can be.
