Weed or Flower?

Those who don’t believe in magic, will never find it. Roald Dahl

Rudy, our gardener, looked at me perplexed as we both kneeled in the garden. Weed or flower? He asked, his English as broken as my Spanish. I shook my head yes, then no. He smiled, then shook his head in agreement. The weed has promise, we decide, quietly nodding our shared if unspoken understanding.

Every day I must act in the garden and consider the thing that should stay or go. This is also true with my daily work at the office. With time and experience, certain actions become increasingly easy. Other actions do not. I wonder if my actions will make the right statement or call into question my own inadequacies. Will they say I am weak? Will they say I am strong? I also wonder how my actions will affect the life of another.

Weed or flower? You tell me. If we are well settled into our point of view, we may miss the opportunity to see something unique or out of the ordinary that has the power to transform ourselves and others as well as our supposedly well-appointed path. The dandelion has properties of healing that outside of being a weed tell us to not so fast judge its rather unattractive structure. As children, we make fervent wishes and blow upon the dandelion flower head as if it possesses the magic of the ages. When was the last time we stopped to consider that the dandelion of our own experience may be a powerful force for a different more positive and hopeful view of the world?

Magic possesses the angle that not all things are perfectly planned, including a hoped for outcome that suddenly takes us on a new course not considered. A so-called weed can be a gift for healing despite its ugly duckling status. So is the beauty and smell of a rose, however many times we are pricked by its thorns. Both possess the teaching that we are not defined by the obvious. We are defined by how we “make magic” out of the thorniness and plainness of our life’s journey. It is where we plant ourselves squarely in the road, embracing all its twists and turns gladly, not looking back once.

Okay, I admit, we do look back once in a while. But, somehow, along the way, we make flowers and weeds and learn to manage life’s journey having both as our companions.  Not a bad possibility for a truly good and very magical life.