Weathering Life's Storms

A rose that has weathered a snow storm

Roses are my favourite flower especially pink coloured ones.  I've always been a romantic at heart.  I love these flowers because they symbolize romance and love, and pink is such a warm and soft colour that it truly complements the symbol.  What I think is striking about this photograph is that this rose has survived a snow storm.  As you can see in the photo, the sun is shining on the rose and soon the snow will melt from it.  There is a parallel between this rose and the way we weather the cold storms in our own lives. 

When we experience hurt in our lives we can either take on all the hurt ourselves or we can realize that shit happens sometimes. When we take all the hurt onto ourselves we set ourselves up for more hurt because we start building walls and obstacles that make it nearly impossible for anybody to get close to us.  We're forever vigilant that we not let anybody in who will hurt us. As they say, once bitten, twice shy. In actual fact, this type of reasoning is faulty because even those people who are closest to us do hurt us sometimes.  The difference is that we forgive them because we understand them and there's mutual respect (hopefully there's mutual respect). Additionally, if the walls we build around ourselves become too high, those walls can topple and fall on us. Whereas, if we realize that shit sometimes happens we don't take all the baggage onto ourselves. Instead of retreating and building walls when we're hurt, we reach out to others, we communicate with them and most of all we learn to love ourselves. The walls come down little by little. In other words, don't let the bad experiences overshadow your life and harden your heart. Trust people until they give you a reason not to trust them (as the First Nations saying goes). Where would the settlers be if it weren't for First Nations people trusting them? There would be no Canada or USA - but I digress. :)

As mentioned previously, the rose in the photo has weathered a snow storm. The sun is shining on that rose and soon the snow will melt from it. That rose is similar to us when we don't let our hearts harden. The storm comes in, things get cold and stormy, but only temporarily (storms don't last forever). When the storm is over, yes, we are covered with snow but we're no worse for the wear and soon the sun melts the snow and we continue on living.  Whereas when we harden our hearts, and build barriers we're not giving ourselves a chance to weather life's storms because we're weakening ourselves.We're in fact telling ourselves that it's all of our fault instead of realizing that shit happens. The storm moves in and we die from the cold we've created for ourselves.

It all comes down to loving ourselves and trusting ourselves. I struggle so much with loving myself but I am getting better at it. I would never tell my best friend that he/she was stupid and yet I tell myself that all the time. I am learning that when I have these negative thoughts about myself that I apologize to myself.  I don't deserve to be called stupid even if it is me telling that to myself. Once we become aware of our negative self talk then we can become active in stopping it. Until we realize it, we will continue to harden our hearts because we are being hard on ourselves.  Nobody else is doing this to us, we are doing it to ourselves.  So, give yourself a break and lighten up on yourself.  You'll be glad you did.