“God is in the roses and the thorns.” ~ Roseanne Cash

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Life is in the rose petals as much as it’s in the droplet of scarlet that emerges from the prick of a finger.

My family came home from their shopping trip the other day with a beautiful white rose plant for our garden. My husband is the gardener; I am the admirer of the garden. Maybe it would be a good practice for me to do more gardening, since I am so resistant to it. Yet, I am content to weed words, to prune sentences, to water paragraphs, and to cultivate essays.

I admit that I don’t often take the time to admire the garden, so overflowing with herbs, flowers, and fruit trees. I too frequently get stuck staring at a screen, mesmerized by the tasks at hand. The other morning, there I was at 5:00 a.m. typing away, and later, I saw (on social media, of course) that there had been a rainbow next to the volcano at sunrise.

I’d missed it! That was the price I paid for waking up and jumping into writing. I take consolation in the fact that I was writing something fresh and inspiring.

Life is in this moment, and it is an all-inclusive package. However, I (we, humans) have a tendency to want just the rainbows and lollipops—the fun, the entertaining, the blissful. I have a habitual pattern of avoiding the mud puddles, the shadow work—and instead, pursuing any available method to eliminate the pain, melancholy spells, and midnight anxieties.

I have been, in other words, wanting only the roses and ignoring the thorns.

But, if you ignore the thorns, they still scratch you—even more deeply, since you were unaware. If you devalue the mud in which the lotus grows, you have missed the point. Everything is interconnected. Nothing is ever independent, alone, or isolated—although, our modern society sure makes a lot of us feel that way a lot of the time. 

And now, I am going back to my tendency to write spiritual platitudes, to give the reader unsolicited advice on how to live a mindful life, to write with rose-colored glasses. I am sick of that sh*t. It’s been played out.

For years, I’ve been publishing pithy blog posts that consist of lists, tips, and techniques. People have read them, and many have kindly written me with gratitude, which I so appreciate. These types of articles can be helpful, but they are also superficial. Too easy. And now, for me, too overdone.

When I was a child, I wanted to be the youngest person ever to write a novel. In my early to mid-twenties, I was working on a novel manuscript, but really, it was just my life and dramas with people renamed and details selectively altered. Then I took ownership and called it a memoir. Then I self-published it—and there it is, sitting there, available. I have taken it down, and put it back up multiple times.

I have been seeing a lot of writing prompts lately related to delving into the shadows, the resistance, the weaknesses, the difficulties. I am resisting writing about resistance. I am not even totally aware at this moment what is it that I am resisting, so how the hell am I supposed to write about that anyway?

Yet, it is there, and I do not have to dig too deep to find it. My thorns. Where I get hooked. My triggers. My habitual patterns.

One of them is always seeking what’s next. What’s for lunch? When is the next group arriving? When are we going on our trip? I am time traveling in my mind and losing the precious opportunity to live life as it unfolds too much of the time.

In conclusion…I don’t know.

All in all, I have no f*cking clue. There’s the thorn.

In spite of this eternal cluelessness, or maybe because of it, I choose to come to writing circle on Monday morning. I choose to meditate when it’s time to meditate, to work when it’s time to work. To live with integrity, true to my word, present, alive, and grateful. In spite of all obstacles, I choose to stop more often to smell the roses. (There come the platitudes again.) May they be of benefit.

 

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Author: Michelle Margaret Fajkus
Image: Unsplash/Rushina Morrison; Unsplash/Annie Spratt
Editor: Yoli Ramazzina
Copy Editor: Leah Sugerman
Social Editor: Danielle Beutell