Waiting is Not Easy - Buds Turning into Flowers
I’m continuing this week to share my inspirations and insights from nature. Last time, we talked about how your roots represent your level of personal development. The more you develop yourself, the stronger you are, and the bigger you can potentially grow. Today, the inspiration comes from a conversation I had with my Japanese teacher. She lives in Japan and was commenting on cherry blossoms and the relationship between when the flowers bloom and time.
She had shared this photo of a branch of the cherry blossom tree, which was beautiful. Her comment, though, was what caught my attention. She made a comment about the life cycle of the flowers and time. Cherry blossoms are only around for about a week before they fall off and are blown away. Depending on when you visit the trees, some flowers are in full bloom, some are half in bloom, and some are still buds. In a very short period of time, those buds bloom, then are gone. She then shared that the flowers don’t pay attention to anything else around them. They just focus on doing what they’re supposed to do. They don’t even compare themselves to the other flowers. If they’re already in bloom, they stay beautiful as long as possible. If they’re in half bloom or full bloom, they focus on blooming.
What I loved about it was the connection between “success” and our perceptions over time. Here’s how I started to look at it. Let’s say our entire life took one whole year. That’s basically what happens with these cherry blossoms, right? We look at where we are in life and compare it to other people’s successes (aka cherry blossoms that have already bloomed). We assume that because they currently have success, we somehow will not succeed, or we are less than them. However, if we simply gave ourselves enough time, a couple more weeks for the cherry blossoms, we would also see our own success.
On the flip side, maybe we’ve begun to see our own success (aka half or full bloom), and we judge others and say they don’t want something enough or are not motivated when maybe it’s just not their time yet. Instead of passing judgment on others, what if we simply looked at it from a passage of time perspective? Some people may not bloom until the very end, while others bloom at the beginning, with most of us blooming somewhere in the middle.
I think the hard part with this perspective is that we’re not very good at seeing things over time. We understand the cherry blossoms over the span of one year or one season. If we blew it up and applied it to our human lives, a couple of weeks becomes a couple of decades. One year becomes 80-100 years. It's really hard to conceptualize where we are in the big scheme of things.
So I’d like to take this moment for us to reflect. Which blossom are you on the cherry blossom branch? Have you already bloomed? Are you in half bloom? Or are you maybe still a bud? What I want to remind you is that no matter where you are, that’s where you’re supposed to be. There’s no other stage for you to be in besides the one you’re in. Your focus, then, is to keep moving forward and work towards what you’re supposed to be.
As part of my style of coaching, I talk a lot about giving yourself the gift of time. If you’d like some guidance and coaching over time, please reach out to me. I’d love to chat more with you. If you’re not sure where you’re supposed to go or who you’re trying to be, start with my Wheel of Life: https://www.kevinkoocoach.com/wheel-of-life1.
Coach Kev helps people find calm, clarity, and confidence in their life while waiting for his turn to blossom. Contact him atkevinkoocoaching@gmail.com, or follow on IG and YouTube @kevinkoocoaching
