Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. — Oscar Wilde
I am still practicing being myself. After years of aspiring to something other than me, time is slowly giving me the wisdom to consider that I am not so bad afterall. Thank God. We can waste a lot of years — and often do — wishing we were thinner, or had blonde hair, or weren’t so tall or short, or less emotional and more courageous. After many years on this planet, I am gaining appreciation of my height, my strong chin, my over sensitivity, my tendency to sleep in, to name just a few of my real and imagined flaws. I am not excusing certain behaviors that could stand improvement. There are plenty of those. What I am saying is that my warts may sometimes be my strengths and that there are many failings I imagine in myself that come from unnecessary comparisons to others.
My two Hibiscus plants come from the same Mallow family, but are completely different. They do not waste time in needless comparisons, nor do they fret and worry about what they aren’t. This leaves a lot of energy for something else, like growing and blooming and strutting their color. No pride there, just doing what they do best, being Hibiscus.
And so I think I will attempt once more to not try so hard to be something I am not. There are so many miracles in life. One is the splendor that exists in life’s variety. Life would be awful boring if we were all the same. So would the garden.
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