"Bloom where you are planted," someone quoted to me a few years ago as I struggled to find my footing in our new town.
I had already bloomed in our previous town and I was too tired to try to bloom again. I had a concrete image of what blooming looked like and I just didn't have the energy to get to that point again. The problem wasn't my circumstance, the problem was my limited definition of blooming.
I was labeling my new experiences as bad, because they felt less satisfying than my previous experiences. A moment of clarification came when I realized my new experiences weren't good or bad, just different. There is a story from the Buddhist tradition about a farmer losing his horse, which sets off a chain of events that the farmer does not label good or bad. By the end of the story the farmer's son is not called to serve in the military, which seems good and it all stemmed from the lost horse, which initially seemed bad. Of course if the story continues to play out, it could be that not being called to serve in the military brings negative consequences. By not judging each incident the farmer acknowledges that what he knows is only the immediate situation, not the full effects of each incident. Just like in life, we have no idea what is around the corner and that not knowing pretty much scares the crud out of all of us.
An openness to what is, rather than desiring what we think is good and escaping what we think is bad, seems to be a step on the path to awareness. Perhaps to fully bloom is to be fully aware.
