I gave my wife an orchid five years ago. Did I say 5? Yes! It bloomed once and then just sat there for the next five years. We watered it a bit and we actually forgot about it most of the time. Well, this year it decided to reward us for our passiveness! I wondered what took it so long, what it was thinking, why it was waiting, did we make it suffer… You know, the usual unanswerable questions of life! Now the obvious meaning here is that it is OK to wait, all good things will come to pass in the right time, don’t hurry nature, etc. And I suppose all of that is true. But the first thing I thought of after my guilt of neglect was gratitude that this little thing didn’t give up on itself. And then the stories started to flood me of people who didn’t give up on themselves. The hero’s journey of sorts. Whenever I meet a PharmD or an MD or a PhD or RN or DNP (or a machine shop operator, teacher, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy) I ask this question: “Was it difficult?” And usually as if by some cosmic thing that unites them, they almost always take a step back to think about it, as if they had never given it much thought. And out comes wisdom and a conversation and a moment of nostalgic connection to a most important part of their life. When they bloomed. How about you?
