A year ago, my first young, deep-rose bougainvillea was planted outside my brick wall. As its branches lengthened, each produced new ones, gathering fullness. My worker spoke excitedly of how the bougainvillea would climb over the wall. But I was imagining it as a tree of a sturdy trunk and branches reaching beyond the highest rim of its cage. At first we tied the multiplying vines to a central stake, but increasing vines and looped rope seemed unlike a tree, so the rope was removed. I pruned the lower vines, and my worker carefully contained his disappointment. By now, the result of my insistence is a seven-foot tall, crooked, gangling trunk—a regrettable loss of beauty for my not listening. My mentor writes in her latest book (which I was rereading simultaneous with admitting my mistake about the tree) that “to write admission of failure is humility.” This helped me find the word that fit my feeling, and by her words, she offered a way through—that of writing.*
A spiritual teacher had earlier been another helper in accepting failure. In one reading he had quietly made a startling yet unquestioned comment—I wasn’t meant to succeed, I was meant to fail. Then he’d paused before adding the reason: I was to look around for another way. Facing my mistake more positively by this time, I had an inspiration. What if the tender bougainvillea trunk was tied to a strong branch of a neighboring neem tree, extending overhead. And this is what my worker did. With summer temperatures early this year, the result has been my joy upon seeing the first deep-rose blooms moving in balmy breaths of air.
On a later day, as I was passing a sunrise-orange-colored bougainvillea tree, I paused as a friend pruned long branches that dropped to the ground. Looking down, he’d asked if I’d like to have a few stalks to put in a bucket of dirt and grow. I hesitated—then realized my new opportunity.
My realization is, “Whether it is moving to a different culture that brings up dissimilar views that may be resisted, or remaining at home, there is opportunity to surrender to another’s view better informed through experience.”
* The numerological meaning of 2017 is “Beginnings.” www.universallifetools.com/2016/11/2017-numerology-spiritual-meaning.
* Pat Schneider, How the Light Gets In, Writing as a Spiritual Practice (NY: Oxford University Press, 2013).