Sunday, July 31, 2016

Risk

When Facebook pulled this photo from 2011 out of the archive as a memory, I actually had no memory of taking it. I didn't doubt Facebook, as I did remember going through a stage of taking closeups of blooms. I just didn't remember THIS particular photo. But Facebook was right. Here's my blog post where I shared this and other photos of tulips from my garden. And my mind started wondering what I could do with this photo, something along the lines of my friend Michele who dabbles in manipulating her photos and adding quotations. As I scroll through her blog to find an example, I discover she has also done one with tulips. I like my photo just as it is, but I did want to get rid of the light to white bit at the upper right.

About this same time, I came across a quotation that sounded like it was Buddhist wisdom:

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Even the name of the author, Anais Nin, sounded like someone coming out of Eastern philosophies. In fact, Nin was born and raised in France to Cuban parents but lived most of her life in the United States and is best known for her journals. Still, this quotation evoked memories of something my yoga teacher shared with us about fear and risk. Fear, she said, makes your world smaller. It is like a turnstile that you must risk working your way through in order to reach something wonderful waiting for you on the other side. Risk opening  yourself to a larger, fuller world. The message resonated because I'd been living more and more fearfully at the time and indeed, my world had shrunk around me. I needed to take some risks and open up my world to wonderful things I didn't even know were waiting for me.

I also thought about a little pot of small carnations I bought along with other plants for my deck garden this spring. I'd been drawn in by their spicy scent and picked one that not only had open blooms but quite a few buds. The blooms lasted a long time before fading but those buds never did open. They just stayed tight and dried up into nothing. What a disappointment. In light of the quotation, it is a lesson for me again, to remember to keep opening to life.

It didn't take long for me to make the connection that this was the perfect quotation for my photo. I'm still fiddling a bit with typeface and getting it into a size that will print as a postcard, but in the meantime, I happily share this with you and say, "Blossom, my friends, blossom!"

 

2 comments:

Lucia Sasaki said...

Hi Sheila, thanks so much for your update and for Anais Nin's quotation inside your picture!
I have been watching my mother growing older (now she is 75 years old) and one thing that I have realized is that because of her pains in her knees and feet, she walks less and less and her world have shrinked. I confess that I fear this kind of limitation ageing brings.
May I be serene and peaceful when this kind of physical limitation starts in my life!
Thanks again!

The Idaho Beauty said...

I think the same, Lucia. Many things shrink our worlds but physical limitations may be one of the most frustrating. And yet, I feel we must sometimes push past those limitations on occasion and might discover we can do more than we thought or even can start doing more the more we do. Still, there are things we cannot change so to be accepting and content is also important and can help keep our world larger than it might otherwise be. May you be able to help your mother have experiences to widen her world in spite of her pain.