The Flower Pot

I wrote this about a year and a half ago, beginning to come out of a difficult time in my life.

July 27, 2007.

The flowers in the pot on my windowsill were dead. Wilted, drooping, colorless. When I was first given these cyclamens as a welcome home gift, the blossoms looked brilliant by the window in my room. Admiring their unique way of growing, I told myself I wouldn't let this plant die. Determination gripped me, telling me I couldn't be less than nurturing. More of them rose from the soil over the next couple weeks.

"I won't let you die on me. I'll keep you alive."

Then change happened. They began to droop, wilt. New flowers stopped growing. The water didn't save them. Nothing would. Where did I go wrong? How cold I let them die when I have done everything I could to keep it alive, blossoming...so desperately?

This, I felt, was my life. That plant, the one that seemed so alive and colorful, was now dead. The many flowers that grew from the roots in the soil lay pitifully flat on the surface. That's what I desperately wanted not to happen. The water, my determination, did not bring it back to life. It was useless...I have failed...

I was soon told it just needed a bigger pot. These spoken words slowly became clear to me. I could not force the plant to stay alive, not in an undersized flower pot. I couldn't keep something, not even a part of the past, alive when it has outgrown what it lives and thrives in and needs change, even if it is unknown. It needs something new, something different, something that it can spread its roots out farther in and grow to be an even bigger reflection of beauty.

It had to die. It wasn't meant to survive and thrive in something that restrains it from its full potential. Slowly it withers away, the memories may go with it or linger around. But it's okay to let something die, fade, wither away if it is unable to stretch further. Just move the roots and what stems and leaves are left to another flower pot, give it new soil, and let it reach farther than it was able to before.

Soon it might need a change again, if it keeps growing. Let it grow, allow yourself to let it die, and replant it once again, until the blossoms can't become any more magnificent.