Pressure

Pressure: a yellow rose escaping the pressure of the bud.

Hello.

I found this old photo of a yellow rose from my garden this morning. Petals are compressed as it unfolds, escaping the pressure of being a bud. It becomes beautiful as it unfolds because of its DNA and its living conditions. It has no choice in the matter. It will unfold. And as it unfolds, it releases all sweet scent it holds to call bees toward its beauty.

Pressure has never worked like this for me, a simple unfolding, a release of molecules, producing a rich, sweet scent. It has not been a natural flow toward beauty. As a creature, who along side DNA also has vivid consciousness, I am confined to the world of choice. I am today the amalgamation of choices I have made through my life—while under pressure. All the little “yes, I will do that” and “no, I won’t do that” choices all add up. Each decision has been a step in a direction leading me to now, to who I am now. It is the pressure, in all its multitudinous degrees, that has forced those choices, big and small. The big ones became the result of lots of small choices. DNA may have given me various aptitudes and tendencies, but what I have chosen to do with them while under pressure is what has shaped me.

An old friend and guide once told me that it’s not the things that happen to you that matter, no matter how terrible they are. We cannot control those things. What matters, he said, is how you respond to them—what choices you make when you are confronted by those pressures.

The pressures surrounding us are real, real for each of us. As I strain against the pressures of staying home, staying safe, caring for others by not connecting, the choice I make is a daily one. It’s not the pressure that will shape me, but how I choose to respond to it that shapes me. I’m sure I won’t continue blooming as sweetly as this rose did. The pressures squeeze me and irritability leaks out. Fatigue and exhaustion ooze from me. I forget to be kind. But I’m learning even in these moments to turn back to kindness. I’m remembering to pause and rest a moment. I’m choosing what I want to be as the result of my choices: this is who I will be tomorrow. Not that rose, now only found in the old picture, but perhaps something else, something better that I was yesterday.

I’ll visit the garden again this morning. And I’ll be reminded again to make better choices.

Hopefully.