Acceptance: A Happiness Tale
From the earliest days of spring, the Joepyweed watched the other wildflowers blossom in the field around her, wondering what she herself would be when she grew up.
First came the coltsfoot, so tiny and bright. Then the shy violet, fragrant and lovely in shape and in hue, and the delicate pastel blossoms of the fruit trees. Oh, such beauty! Surely she, too, would soon burst with sculpted petals and perfume the summer air.
But as the days passed, each one bringing forth another bit of colorful splendor, she wasn’t blossoming at all. All she seemed able to produce was a tall, thick stem and big, bulky leaves.
She was, she thought, hardly the picture of grace. In fact, as her chunky stem shot higher and higher, rising above every other plant around her, she fell into a deep sadness, concluding that she was some ugly deviant of nature.
Below her, as the sun passed the equinox and the days began growing shorter again, she watched the daisies and clover and thistles bloom, and at last the sweet yarrow and Queen Anne’s lace. At least, she thought, she had the perfect vantage point for watching each one come into season, blossom and fade.
She had long since accepted that her dreams of personal beauty were not meant to be. Now, she spent her days feasting on the beauty the other plants produced. She noticed that, for all their loveliness, their life spans were brief, their days of glory short-lived. Perhaps beauty wasn’t everything, she thought, and she began to feel a growing sense of gratitude for the gifts of height and longevity that nature had given her.
Then, one day, as the late summer sun burned away the morning’s mists, she felt an unfamiliar tingle at the edges of the small stalks that had risen from her clumps of leaves. She was budding! She was actually budding! She could hardly contain her astonishment and joy.
Time flew past as she watched her buds swell and open, and she laughed as she saw the fluffy clusters of orchid-colored strands that they produced. I’m still more a clown than a beauty, she thought. But the bees loved her and she loved the way the breeze felt as it danced through her feathery petals. And she was glad for them and at peace and happy in her life.
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