Points of Light, time for a beautiful story...
Just like every other day, Tayir Alfiniq awoke to the smell of smoldering ash. Thoughts about words ran through his mind. "Why," he thought, had the words he loved and knew so well, "why had they lost their rhyme?" There seemed something right in waking this way of having both the smell of smoldering ash and thoughts about words lacking rhyme collide one with another. As it presents us with nuanced mysteries and challenges, it seems that life becomes exponentially interesting. Tayir wasn't immune to these nuanced aspects of living life and meeting them head-on simply meant life was being lived. Words should make a heart's meaning flow, and smells should fill our intellect with reasons.
His beginning began like so many beginnings. Labor, a final push, a slap, the crying of tears, a nipple to latch unto, and finally a satisfied and content smile. As our beginnings expand, happiness starts to fill our lives as we see light, even a lot of light in a hug. Later, we find colors in the many friends that cross our paths. As we grow, we're bequeathed more light and colors, and in this, we find our lives are constantly being filled with beauty. Early on, we're often content to find how light hits a soft, delicate, fragrant rose flower, revealing its color of either white, pink, yellow, or red to us. In the light's revelation of this rose flower with its warm, wonderful, and radiant color, some of us find beautiful words that paint us beautiful pictures of meaning for our lives lived and of the people in our lives, and sometimes, of just a single individual of so much import to us. So far in this life, we've lived life at a steady constant - the stars shine, life makes complete sense, our words rhyme, the rose flower fragrance is sweet, and we've not had to watch out for obstacles.
As our lives continue; as we grow and mature, some of us eventually find there's so much more to the previously mentioned rose than just the flower. Some of us then take a deeper look at the pictures our words once painted of the rose. We question what we once believed - our complete self-assurance that every jot and tittle of each and every word our hearts had previously shared was authentic to the reality of the rose. But as the actuality of life speaks patiently and lovingly to our hearts, we discover our hearts were only paying partial attention to our rose, and for that, we only knew our rose in a very superficial way. So, with fidelity to what is authentic, our heart's searched for more words, for better words, and for words containing the complete spectrum of light so that we might find even more colors to paint a rose that would be faithful to its honest and organic beauty.
This is what our hearts found - May I ask you, "Where in my picture do I paint the roots of my roses?" And yet the rose can not exist without her foundation of roots. It’s in her roots where she can grow and expand; and the deeper her roots are, she can always be happy in her strength. "Is she beautiful?" Then I can’t avoid her roots. When she’s young, and as she grows, crowns form from her roots. From her many crowns, she begins to become the visage of a rose I’m very acquainted with because from her crowns shoots emerge that turn into branches which soon grow stems. Where in my picture did I paint either a crown, a shoot, or even a stem? But in her complexity, isn’t she becoming more and more beautiful? Still, and I don't know how it's even possible, soon she grows even more beautiful as tear-shaped leaflets form from her stems. From her leaves, buds appear, and her complete beauty has almost become apparent. Now thorns grow and, in these thorns, I learn the beautiful lesson she sometimes wants to be left alone. “Ouch” is a word from me my rose sometimes needs to hear, but I didn’t paint the thorns. It’s been a while, but now sepals are growing. Sepals look like green leaves and they’re awesome because, for my rose, they protect her rosebud before she blooms. I should have painted her sepals for you, but I didn’t. Finally, her beautiful, soft, delicate, and fragrant petals blossom as she reveals her pistils and stigmas to me. This I painted.
Just like so many of us, Tayir Alfiniq was born, grew, and matured. Just like many of us, he found colors in life's light and all these colors gave Tayir all the letters that seemed to rhyme and make sense as they were allowed to paint the beautiful impressions his heart needed, wanted, and desired his words to express. But life isn't simple nor is it simply explained, and while the nuanced mystery and challenge of the rose worked out well, others can be more complex. The mystery of the rose challenge was outside his skin, but maturity found in growth can help us open our eyes to see that while in a peaceful state of repose a delicious thought of someone's outward beauty may help us peacefully smile, we eventually come around to understand life, just like every rose, is so much richer, deeper, and more complex than youth's shallowness paid attention to. Life is interesting, sometimes as we grow our thoughts shift inward, and there comes that time for an important question, "In a life lived, in my life, what subtle nuance am I missing and how deep does my dive have to be to find my answer?"
Said with some of the most colorful words ever spoken, Winston Churchill gave us a clue to understanding ourselves when he simply, but cleverly, made this statement, "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Indeed, discovering our own intrinsic nuanced mystery can be the biggest challenge of any life lived. However, this can become even harder for us when the beauty we found in the light of colorful, meaningful words seem to lose their rhyme. Still, finding the rose was more complex than a simple flower helped shed more light on all roses. This gave all roses more colors, and for all their wonderful light, roses became delightfully, devastatingly beautiful in all their newfound complexity. During a moment of doubt, as he looked in the mirror, a smile found its way on Tayir's face. While clever, Churchill's statement wouldn't become his Gordian Knot. No matter how nuanced, as he picked up Alezander's sword, he realized he was up to both the mystery and the challenge.
Looking in the mirror, the rose captured Tayir's thoughts as he realized life was so much more than an appearance. In the mirror, more light was being reflected back as thoughts of the richness and complexity of lives lived were thought. In all this new light, more and more beauty of Tayir's life was being reflected back. While looking at all the beauty in the mirror, the doubts calmed down in a repose of quietness. In this calm, she realized Tayir Alfiniq hadn't always been her name. This was the very moment she once more smelled the smoldering ash even as she intuitively spread her awesome, intelligently intricate, beautiful wings. As she flew away, she realized that like a rose, her life was much, much, much more complex and important than just a flower.
As Always,
Love and Peace,
Tod w/only one d
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