• The Red Rose and the Journey Ahead


    tab I was simply walking along the road, and looked to my right, only to see a field of yellow flowers. And smack dab in the middle of the field… I saw a red Rose… All alone… In a field of yellow Tulips…
    tab I veered from the road and curiously walked over to the lonely Rose --full in bloom-. I sat down next to the red Rose. And asked how it got there. And it answered, “A Blue Jay picked me up in its beak, I asked where I was to be planted… It answered, ‘Where you shall be planted, among others unlike you. So you can standout… like the unlike do. So you see… I’m helping you be your own.’ So… the Blue Jay dropped me in this field; full of yellow Tulips…” I stared at the Rose for a few seconds before responding. “But… how do you be who you be if there are none other like you in this field?” I asked more inquired like than I should have. But the Rose more than happily answered, “That’s an easy one. I just act the way I act,” the Rose paused for a second, as if brewing a new sentence, “I’m a Rose, their all Tulips, yes, that may be true, but I act as if a Rose would in a field of Roses.” The Rose said while straightening her stem as straight as she possibly could. I only could nod, and etch the answer in my mind. I stood up, bowed to the red Rose, and turned away, walking back to the path that I came from. Turning my head slightly, pausing my footsteps momentarily, and watched the red Rose; still stem straightened. She surveyed the other flowers, which seemed to be curious to know what had just happened that didn’t involve them. Then the Rose just tried to straighten herself impossibly straighter, and the Rose smiled in bright content. I turned my head back to the oncoming road that seemed un-traveled; the dirt that yet to be flattened by feet or automobiles. A road of a journey untold, and not yet explored. I stepped onto it and walked down it, looking at the Rose through the corner of my eye, her answer still etched in my mind…