Your preferred method of meditation is to close your eyes, focus on your breath and allow your mind and your breath to become one. You transform any negative thoughts into clouds, and imagine them drifting away. You spend hour upon hour, day after day practising this. This allows you to maintain your peace.

*

Roses are one of the most treasured flowers on this planet. Favoured by many, roses are seen as a symbol of love. The sweetly fragrant flowers fill the air with softness in spring. As the buds begin to bloom, what was a prickly entanglement of branches becomes a vibrant burst of life. The flowers confidently look up at the sun, seemingly thriving, and observing the clouds as they drift across the serene summer sky.

When people meet you, they may be lured in by your soft scent, or become entranced by the intrinsic beauty of your flowers. Or, they may move a little closer, get pricked by one of your thorns and cry out in pain.

If you continuously angle your face upwards towards the sun, you cannot see the thorns you bare. People’s reaction to you incites confusion within you. You’re a delicate, sweetly scented flower. Others cannot possibly have been harmed by you. If they have hurt themselves coming close to you, they must have paper-thin skin.

The flowers on rose bushes typically last between 10-14 days, at which point their heads slowly begin to droop, forcing them to look down at themselves. As autumn rolls around, the few remaining petals float softly to the ground, leaving you bare. Only now will you begin to see the very core of who you are.

In some countries, rose bushes can produce flowers all year round. Those who grew up in warmer climates may have been expected to vibrantly bloom every month of the year; being loved depended on it.

As they get older and change environments, they are confronted with a harsh reality: they physically cannot bloom in winter. Determined not to feel a failure, some people construct a greenhouse around themselves, to keep themselves warm and ensure they never wilt. But greenhouses are made of fragile glass and life certainly has its storms.

As soon as you feel one of your flowers begin to droop, you focus all of your energy into growing a new bud. This constant stream of flowers keeps up appearances and prevents you looking down at yourself. But not allowing yourself to wither is restricting your ability to live.

If you allow all pretences to drop, and spend winter hibernating, you can channel all of your energy into strengthening the core of who you are: your identity. Presenting yourself as a flowery goddess may entice many, but it will enrage the perceptive souls that see beneath the veneer to your thorny core.

If you won’t acknowledge your thorns, then I can’t acknowledge your flowers. We must shatter these thick facades. They may feel safe. They may feel warm. But the greenhouse you have built around yourself is a self-inflicted glass ceiling; you are trapped within your own inflated ego. And surely it is a burdensome weight to carry on your shoulders? Perhaps, the real sadness here lies not with the people that are being hurt by those unaware of their own thorns. Those being harmed can simply move away and heal.

The real sadness lies with those who completely reject the negative parts of themselves. Those that value looking pretty over being real, since their worth always depended on it. Because those are the people that will never grow, nor will they ever truly be happy with who they are. They may appear to bethriving, their heads confidently facing the sun. But, they are actually stagnant, repeating these dynamics over and over again. They will never heal.

Some people believe they are a rose bush with no thorns; every inch of them is covered in petals. Some people believe they are a rose bush with no flowers; every inch of them is covered in brambles. Some people understand that they are a whole person that has both flowers and thorns. Our belief about ourselves stems from the climate in which we grew.

~& let us not forget the invisible children amongst us. Those who are equally as troubled yet utterly anonymous. Those who instead carry houses made of mirrored glass, and exist simply reflecting the outside world back to itself. Those who can be anything you want them to be, except themselves. Those who hide themselves from the sun, terrified of the repercussions if they bloom. Which path would you choose: eternal darkness or 7 years of bad luck? ~

Just as a rose bush cannot remain in bloom forever, it cannot hibernate forever either. We will all have our chance to unashamedly bask in the sun and bloom.

Your actions do upset other people sometimes, and people do feel frustration towards you. Take note of the negative thoughts you are rejecting; they could just give you some answers. Endlessly looking up at the sky and pushing negative thoughts away is short-sighted; if your behaviour remains constant, so will your problems. Have the courage to strip yourself back and examine the core of who you really are.Give yourself the chance to find genuine peace.

*

The juxtaposition of unconditional love is perfectly embodied by a rose.

Delicately thorny; peacefully chaotic; softly scarring.

Love and pain accompany one another, bitterly entwined in a messy affair. Opening yourself up to another can enable you to experience one of the most powerful human emotions. Yet, it leaves you vulnerable, as the thorns have the capacity to slowly drag across your exposed, beating heart.

In sickness and in health. With thorns and with flowers. In hibernation and in bloom. Vows many blissfully promise, yet so few can truly fulfil.

Unconditional love is not for the faint hearted; it is for the courageous. It endures all seasons.

*