When you look at a rose what do you see, are you looking at the entire rose? Where is your attention, only on the colorful petals? Part of the rose is its thorns, but how often do you look closely at them instead of the petals? Do you take in the whole plant or are you distracted by the colorful petals?

We are often distracted by what we perceive to be the colorful petals of others and do not see the whole person and yes we are like the rose in many ways. We have thorns, periods of flowering and times we are dormant in this life. Where we differ from the rose is that we often try to hide our thorns and do not want anyone to see them. This is because if they do, they may not like us or worse, not love us.

When our life is dormant, we can feel as though things will never blossom again. However, does the rose stop blooming because it has thorns or because winter came and went? Of course not, and our lives will bloom again if we stay true to who we are and do the best we can at each moment. It does not matter how many thorns we have because that is part of who we are in this life. Resisting our thorns, trying to hide them from others and ourselves only creates more pain. Embrace the entire you, because without the thorns you would not be you.