To Life,
I once heard a story of a flower—a flower born sheltered from the world.
It hid itself away from everything around it, and from all that it believed the outside held: from the criticism, from the cruelty, from the calamities.
Only inside its own little pod did the little flower find peace, for it was in that pod—the pod that the little flower had come to see as its world—that it simply had itself. However, at the same time, it was exactly that: it only had itself. In its attempts to shield itself from the outside, from all things it had perceived to be wrong, it left itself ostracized and alone. Until it didn’t. Until the day the little flower was pushed out of its home. Until the day the storm barreled through.
It swept up the little flower’s pod and threw the little flower out of it; it threw the little flower out into the unknown.
As the rain poured down, the little flower saw all the horrors the world had to endure: the water that poured down and overwhelmed the flower, the wind that tried to pull it out of its roots, and the dirt that seemed to hold it down.
However, as the storm began to pass, the world revealed to the little flower all the beauties that it had to offer—all the things that the little flower had once thought to be horrors revealed themselves to be wonders.
It showed the flower the glow that rain had brought it, the change the wind had shown it, and the stability the dirt had brought it.
The little flower that had once hidden itself away from the world it thought to be so evil found itself right in the middle of all the chaos, and it loved it.
It loved the world for all the chaos and calamity that the world held, but, even more, it loved the world for all the the compassion and kindness that the world held.
To me, you are my storm.
You are the thing that pushes me. You push me out of my comfort zone, to places I’ve never known, to places I’d rather not be. You push me to love each and every one of those places, for it is you who show me the beauty in all of it.
It is you who has shown me all the compassion and kindness that the world holds.
Love always,
Alysse
