FOLDED

We generally arrive alone, though sometimes we arrive in sets.  We spend a moment growing, a moment budding, a moment blooming, and a few moments shedding all life’s accumulations before we return to that from which we came.

As we view our own lives unfolding, the wise of us come to realize that this is as it should be. When we become caretakers of others’ lives, the wise of us also realize that there is not much that can be done to improve this cycle.  Much can be done to damage the cycle, but not much can be done to that which is already as it should be.

As a horiculturist, we can withhold essential nutrients, to stifle the growth and stunt the result into a miniaturized caricature of that which could have been.  We can introduce contaminants to produce unnatural colors.  We can saturate to the point of encouraging rot at the very root.  We can fertilize too much, too soon, too late, and actually burn that which we wish to preserve.  Or we can crush, at the peak of the bloom, in order to prolong and preserve the culmulation of that which we consider the “preferred” of the cycle, by capturing mutilated petals within the pages of a book.

But who are we fooling?  What have we improved? What have we preserved?  Not the color, not the texture, not the smell, nor even the moment we wish to hold on to.

For the most part,   as caretakers, we need but watch, and appreciate, the miraculous cycle as it takes place before us, listening and providing that which is needed, as it is needed, in the amounts it is needed.

And then…let be…as it should be…