Why present your flowers to a culture that considers you a weed? Blooming in the wrong spot only serves to make you a target of meticulous landscaping. Don’t waste your words when the true believers come for you with determined yardwork.
“I’ve always been here,” you'll cry in vain, receiving only a credentialed response: “Well, in that case, we consider you naturally invasive.” And the official clean-up will continue. Not a trace of bad conscience in their heads as they dig out your deepest roots, ones your untimely blooming has inadvertently guided them towards.
So what if I’ve never been published? I’ve never been hunted either, and, given the atmosphere of the day, I suspect some correlation.
In all this, I do not believe I’m alone; I can sense a legion in waiting. We are the late bloomers. Our lateness is calculated self-defense. It’s not that we have nothing to offer; we’d just rather save our fruits for those who will not waste them. Having preempted rejection, we take the initiative. Like anything that intends to cover great distance, we pace ourselves, most noticeably at the outset.
As things stand, I counsel a time of productive waiting. Waiting in lieu of wasting. With eyes peeled, growing as a form of stretching, readying ourselves for future escapes once a path presents itself. May we always remain attuned to the wind that will one day take us from here, towards the future fields of a new wild home. To be in the wild, to be a part of what constitutes the wild itself (and not its resident exception), that is our destiny! One day! To bloom as an honest expression of ourselves and at the same time, doing our part to paint the greater landscape in truer, more brilliant colors!
One day, friends, one day! A homeward wind is coming, a homeward wind we will name as such only in retrospect because initially it will lead us nowhere familiar. A new rooted beginning! Where we can finally, without hesitation, get down to the business of serious blooming. Finally, the chance to present the fruits of sustained inward labor to worthy peers we’ve had the wisdom and patience to wait for.
Webster's definition--weed: “a plant that is not valued where it is growing and is usually of vigorous growth.”
As always, your artistic essay is provocative in using a meaningful analogy to into the perplexities of life.