Out on our "tired" autumn lawn I noticed a small purple spot.
I went out to check it out, thinking it might be a small piece of fabric, or maybe a piece of plastic, perhaps from a candy wrapper.
What I found was a tiny thistle, perhaps all of 4-5 inches high, coming into bloom on September 30th.
Thistle flowing season is long past...
Of course it was growing in a spot that had gotten mowed regularly, and yet here it was... perhaps because it has been raining, and it has been a good three weeks since I last had the lawnmower out.
Somehow, this determined little plant wasn't about to give up and die, no matter what "hardships" had been cutting it down since spring.
Life Finds a Way...
A courageous young woman — struggling with cancer, with about a 2% chance of survival — once said:
"You can't wait until life isn't hard anymore before you decide to be happy."
She wrote a song about her struggles in life... give it a listen:
We're all a little lost, and it's allright...
These days, I seem to hear more about setbacks and hardship than anything else.
People are dying; people are losing their jobs; people are becoming penniless and homeless; friends vanish suddenly... and months later we learn that they "tripped the lights fantastic;" people are losing hope — we mourn what we once thought of as "normal life."
But was life ever really "normal?"
Life Finds a Way...
Some years ago, I was sitting by Oak Creek in Sedona, Arizona... there's a spot they call "Buddha Beach" where people sit at water's edge and look at the hundreds/thousands of stacked stone cairns people have left over the years.
Across the creek, there's a 30-foot tree that grows out of the solid red rock:
I used to sit and look at that tree, because it offered a lovely sense of perspective on what it means to experience hardship and moving on regardless.
Life — little and large — finds a way to go on, even when things seem impossibly challenging and bleak; when we feel like we just have nothing left in the tank.
Everywhere around us, life finds a way.
Shamrocks growing in a crack in solid rock, Denmark
Sometimes it's good to look around us and remember that maybe things aren't really that bad.
Even though we might feel a little lost...
Thanks for reading, and welcome to October!
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Created at 20211001 00:20 PDT
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