Imagine planting a few seeds of your favorite flower into a small rustic pot. You place it on your windowsill and you are so excited to watch it grow that you can hardly stand it. Every day, you water it and you’re so afraid you will water it too much or too little, even though you’ve done so much research about what the happy medium is. That’s all you want anyways; you want your little plant to be happy and grow into something not-so-little. And eventually it starts to do just that. You wake up one morning to find a little stem bursting from the damp soil. Your smile is so wide that it starts to hurt because those seeds are now something because of you. You did that. So you continue to water it every day, and every day, you swear you can see it grow a little more. Maybe it’s just your imagination, maybe it’s because you care so much and only want to see it do so well. But it is growing, even when it’s not apparent. That little flower is growing.

Imagine one day you wake up late for work and you rush out the door and at work you realize you forgot to water the stem that is much bigger now. You promise yourself that you will water it when you get home, but work ends up running late and then your friends want to meet up for dinner after. By the time you get home, all you can think about is falling into bed and sleeping the day off. And that’s what you do. You sleep straight through the night and don’t even think of the little flower you forgot to water. The next morning you wake up and remember and you’re so upset. You think that now you’ve lost all progress, that after one day of neglect your flower will wither away and die. You could give up on the little guy, you could accept that no matter what his fate is doomed. But instead, you wake up that morning and you water your plant. You give him a little extra water, but not too much. Just enough and you promise yourself you won’t forget again. And you don’t.

Imagine one day you wake up to see that your little flower is not-so-little and it’s actually forming buds. You can see a few petals peeking out, and within a few days, they are making a full appearance. You have never been so glad to not have given up on something. Your flower is so glad that you didn’t give up.

Imagine that soon enough, your flower becomes too big for the small pot that you planted the little seeds in. You stare at the long stem that is now absolutely blooming in petals and colors, and you stare in absolute disgust. Why did it need to grow in order to become so beautiful? It was supposed to stay small and fit into the smallest pot possible, because that’s what all the other beautiful flowers do. But it’s okay, your flower can still be small and delicate and he can still fit into his original pot with some work. So you restrict his water intake to every three days and you get upset when you don’t notice any real changes after the first day. You criticize the flower and hate the flower and tell it isn’t good enough to be outside in the real world with the real plants. You close the curtains and take away his only source of sunlight. No, in order for it to be good enough, it has to be small enough. Because small is the equivalence of beauty, right? The flower must suffer to be beautiful.

Imagine how awful that flower must feel. You were the only person unconditionally there for him and now you’ve turned on him and he has no one left. Think about how lonely and hideous he must feel. Think about how weak he must be, in the dark, starving. You wanted the little seeds to grow into something more, but now that something more isn’t good enough for your standards of beauty. How sad the flower must be, he was only doing what he was supposed to do; he was only doing what you wanted.

Now how ridiculous does that sound? Who would do that to a plant? Who would restrict the things necessary for the flower to grow and blossom and be as healthy as possible? Who would want to see a flower wither away in the dark, petals falling with hungry despair? No one would. You wouldn’t, so why would you do it to yourself? Each flower and each plant is different than any other, just like you are completely unique yourself. So if you wouldn’t compare a flower to the rest of the garden, why would you compare yourself to the rest of the world? You are a flower and you will bloom and shine and be beautiful if you allow yourself. You will blossom into the best possible version of yourself if you stop restricting yourself to the love and energy you need.

Right now there may be little seeds inside of you. They are waiting for your love and attention; they are waiting to grow. There may also be an already blossomed flower, frail and withered, on the brink of collapse. Maybe you didn’t take care of your flower and maybe you think it’s too late. Your flower is stronger than you think and with just a little dedication and a lot of care and nurturing, you can bring it back to health. Its not too late little flower, don’t deny yourself of food or sleep or happiness. Surround yourself with people who only offer more sunlight into your life. Create your own energy and live your life as one individual in a community of other individuals, all beautiful and none the same.