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Words cannot fully describe the appreciation I have for this time of year. The smell of the grass and dirt, the flowers in bloom, the warm sun on my face…..thank you thank you thank you!
Suddenly I am moved to go for walks. Around every corner lies a vision so spectacular, I must take a picture. Life feels easier here, close to nature, soaking it all in.
I will be sharing some of my spring inspiration when I get a chance to upload the pictures but in the mean time, I had to share with you the amazing sentiment below. A dear friend sent it to me and I knew I had to share.
The story of the daffodils, below, shares one of life’s great truths. Put one step in front of the other, unwavering, and you will get there.
If you happen to know the original source please let me know and I will give them credit, but in the meantime, enjoy the daffodils.
With Love,
Joelle
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Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and reluctantly I drove there. When I finally walked into Carolyn’s house I was welcomed by the joyful sounds of happy children. I delightedly hugged and greeted my grandchildren. My daughter smiled calmly and said, ‘We drive in this all the time, Mother.’ ‘But first we’re going to see the daffodils. It’s just a few blocks,’ Carolyn said. ’I'll drive. I’m used to this.’ It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it over the mountain and its surrounding slopes. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns, great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, creamy white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, and saffron and butter yellow. Each different colored variety was planted in large groups so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique hue. There were five acres of flowers. ‘Who did this?’ I asked Carolyn. ‘Just one woman,’ Ca rolyn answered. ‘She lives on the property. That’s her home.’ Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house, small and modestly sitting in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house. On the patio, we saw a poster. ‘Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking’, was the headline. The first answer was a simple one. ‘50,000 bulbs,’ it read. The second answer was, ‘One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and one brain.’ The third answer was, ‘Began in 1958.’ For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than forty years before, had begun, one bulb at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop. Planting one bulb at a time, year after year, this unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. One day at a time, she had created something of extraordinary magnificence, beauty, and inspiration. The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles of celebration. That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time–often just one baby-step at time–and learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things We can change the world . ‘It makes me sad in a way,’ I admitted to Carolyn. ‘What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago and had worked away at it ‘one bulb at a time’ through all those years? Just think wh at I might have been able to achieve!’ My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way. ‘Start tomorrow,’ she said. She was right. It’s so pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask, ‘How can I put this to use today?’ Use the Daffodil Principle. Stop waiting….. Until your car or home is paid off
Until you organize the garage Until you retire There is no better time than right now to be happy. |
Lessons From Spring
April 29, 2008
Ahhhhhh SPRING!
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As I mentioned in my newsletter, one of the best things about going on vacation is coming home. It is great to be home from my 10 day Caribbean vacation and I cannot imagine this winter if we had not had it.
They had me at page 3 when the 13 year old Mary narrates a beheading while referencing her marriage which had occurred the year previous. Combine 12 year old brides, the politics and grandeur of the English court, the role of women as pawns in their families’ quest for status and power and my new found awareness that the church of England was founded so that a king could get rid of his wife of 20+ years and marry some girl who might give him a male heir and I had 700 pages of guilty pleasure that lasted all the way to the president’s club lounge on the trip back to Ohio.
Many of my favorite moments from the trip included coming back to the cabin after a full day of activity (we were in a balcony suite on a princess cruise) opening the sliding doors to our deck and the ocean, climbing into bed with the sun streaming in and the sound of the waves in the background and reading or napping until dinner. YUM!
Our first island was Barbados and it was one of those experiences where you get you are not in Kansas any more. I found the whole thing a little unsettling as we were driven through town and witnessed poverty along with the types of scenes you might see in big-city slums. Even at the beach my husband was solicited 3 times to buy drugs, right among the little tiki bars at 11:00 in the morning. The water was that gorgeous aqua blue and we had a blast playing in the waves, but all in all, my gut feeling was that I was not safe and I will probably not return.
All of the islands were beautiful, and all of them left you with that subtle reminder that much of the rest of the world lives quite differently than the average North American. At one point I did the math to realize that the cost of our trip was several year’s wages for many of the people we witnessed on our travels.
We went dolphin watching in St Lucia which was fabulous. To see what these animals can do, the way they launch themselves feet out of the water, they way they would race the boat and use our wake as an amusement park. It was stunning. Not to mention I got to see flying fish - And I am not talking jumping fish that look like they are flying, I am talking FLYING FISH. They would launch themselves away from the boat and go for 100’s of feet, looking like a dragon fly or humming bird, skipping across the waves. It was like watching evolution at work, leaving me to question, are those really flying fish or swimming birds? Very cool!
When I get a chance I will share about the unexpected epiphanies, one which was delivered when I swallowed about half of the ocean while wave jumping and the other from a quiet moment resting at the spa pool while a lovely woman brought me drinks and cool towels. 