Life moves in rhythms, it is the way of nature – the seasons as you will of our lives. There is a duality to all things that govern us, birth and death, young and old, great times and crappy times, happiness and sadness; there cannot be one without the other. Without these rhythms we would not know all the experiences that life has to offer. Life would be like eating only porridge for every meal of every day all your life, and as much as I like porridge I would not fancy that. Likewise, no one wants to live in an all white decorated house with no splashes of colour anywhere, that would be dull and monotonous (not to mention really hard to keep clean).
It’s the same with life – life needs colour. For human nature, by its very makeup, craves the new and the understanding of why things are the way they are. The natural world is full of a variety of colours and so too should our lives be. Sometimes we experience a torrential downpour in life; sometimes we feel we can’t cope with what is happening – just like a river bank in a field cannot cope with the gush of water from a flood. But like the riverbank in the field, after the downpour has passed it somehow renews us. It nourishes us with something that we would not normally get from our day to day living.
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
In the case of the riverbank it is silt or new seeds washed down from further upstream. In our case it could be the reassessing of our lifestyle, of our possessions, of our spending habits or habits in general. Life, along with nature, works according to seasons or rhythms to enhance growth and make us be all we can be. We could say with regards to flowers that for about ten months of the year most are not at their best, they are not doing anything to achieve their goals; their life purpose. We could say that they are wasting their time doing nothing, things aren’t going right for them because we can’t see them flowering, however when you think about it they are. Although they seem to be not doing anything (for the purpose of a flower for us is to see it flower) they are in fact living the cycle of their life; we all cannot be blooming all the time. Just as flowers must be dormant to replenish their energy for the major growth times in their cycle so must we, in a way. Our times of replenishing are when adversity comes to us, when we honour the talents within us and when we push through our comfort zones to grow our characters.
You cannot bloom all the time;
but remember when you are not, it is because you are gaining
strength for when the season changes
It’s good to remember that when times are not seeming to go well (especially now with the economic crisis) we should always take into account that they will come good again. Those times are our ‘floodwater’ that are carrying within them the silt to renew us. Go with the flow and look for the good in all situations for that is where new energy lies.
Nature does nothing uselessly ~ Aristotle
