“Shame about the dandelion”, said Mr Gundolf, who was weeding in his garden. “Good for the rose”, I said.
Tending Flowers
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Category Archives: Personal development
Window Cinema
It was raining. No school today. Like every Saturday morning, she stood behind the counter where the bread rolls and cakes and other pastries were displayed for sale. Through the shop window she saw the leaves swept from the trees by the wind swirling through the street. In front of the shop, a woman was struggling with her umbrella. Above the lady she could read the inscription “Miller’s Bakery””, in mirror writing, of course, for anyone looking at the pane from the inside.
When she was alone and did not need to attend to any customers, she liked to imagine that this shop window was a cinema screen and that what she could see behind it was a film. In her imagination, she would alter the scene. The cars would become stage coaches, the leaves would become birds, and the lady with the umbrella could become her mother fighting a wild dragon. Now this image amused her especially. Her mother, who habitually misunderstood her, who could misinterpret any word she said in a splitsecond, who could turn good into bad and bad into good – she would probably win a dragon fight, or at least go for a draw. Until the next fight.
The lady with the umbrella was long gone. Now she imagined what she would write on the shop window, replacing the boring sign “Miller’s Bakery”. How about “You mean a lot to me” or “I like you anyway”? Or “I tease you ‘cause I love you”?
She grinned at the thought. She imagined what these inscriptions would look like on the large shop windowpane. Anyone passing it would be able to read it, including her mother, of course. In her imagination, she saw the inscription “You mean a lot to me”. Would her mother finally understand her if she read those words?” She saw her mother standing in front of the windowpane with a furrowed brow, slowly shaking her head. Then the thought came to her mind: “You need to put your words in mirror writing.”
The Bliss of Excessive Labour
Often I have asked myself why some people seem restlessly occupied, have a densely filled agenda and desk, and talk about their stressful work, but at the end of the day have no better results than others who still have spare time for finding rest and recreation.
It might seem that excessive labour offers good security. First of all it creates an impression of this person as being utterly important. Whoever works unceasingly must be indispensable. A person who has done so much and complains of the burden of his work will more easily be forgiven if he commits some error. He may hope to be envied or even pitied. If it is noticed that his work is never finished, some of his tasks may be delegated to somebody else. He can at least avoid receiving further tasks too early. In the course of time, his spectrum of work will be defined more narrowly but at least there should not be too many new challenges awaiting him. On the other hand, he will not want too many jobs to be taken away from him, lest he lose the great advantages of his work overload. When other colleagues are made redundant, the sheer amount of work he has to do is seen at first glance, and he will be considered indispensable. Even those who are self-employed or work as civil servants can enjoy the good conscience of having done all that they could by having filled the available time completely with industrious activity.
How disadvantageous would it be, indeed, if he succeeded in being finished with all his tasks in shorter time! Or, if he even took a break or thought about some concept in which he could work in a far more relaxed yet more effective manner! This would surely cause him to suffer the envy and animosity of others. But worse would be the struggle with that inner voice of conscience with its remark: “The man who takes a rest is lazy.” I am convinced: Whoever wants to achieve much while being relaxed and be successful with little effort will need to have a strong personality.
Eagle’s Flight
I do not know whether you have ever seen an eagle. In the zoo, of course, but I do not mean that. If you see an eagle in the zoo, most of the time it looks tired, bored and sleepy. For what shall he do? An eagle is meant to fly, and this he cannot do in a cage, at least not really well. What impresses me about eagles is their strength, and how they use their strength. You might think that such a large bird would move its wings in powerful beats. But the eagle does not need this. It circles in the sky, and even though it rarely moves its wings, it goes higher and higher till you lose sight of it. How does the eagle know that it can fly? If such an animal could speak, I suppose it would not discuss the existence of the air before spreading its wings. Eagles do not ask for proof. They are content with the experience that they are carried by the air. The outcome is their proof.
All by Itself
A man stood at the glass door of a department store early in the morning, with the intention of entering. The door wouldn’t even open an inch. He tried to push against it, but nothing happened. He could have knocked or called. He could have tried to open the door by force. The man did none of these. He looked at the sign with the opening times, looked at his watch, and then went for a walk for about ten minutes. Then he came back and stepped in front of the door. The door now opened all by itself, automatically and as if from the hand of a ghost.
The Empathizer
There are people who can listen well. And there are others who can observe well. I knew a man once who could do both really well. More than anything else, he was a good empathizer.
When he met another person, in thought or in action he took on his behavior. He looked as the other did, he breathed in and out like him, he moved like the other, and also took on his voice. He felt how a man felt, when he expressed himself and moved in such a way, as the one he met. Then he often asked himself, how a bridge could be created which led away from this experience to another, to a much more powerful, free, and liberated existence.
This man understood many languages. He not only understood them but he spoke them too, at least when he wanted to. Sometimes he spoke the language of an offended person who kept a tear in his voice and held his left hand at his throat, who rubbed his eye after a painful word and coughed at upsetting words. Sometimes he spoke the language of a melancholic person who breathed as if drawing deep breath caused him pain, who spoke of all the things which are lacking, and who almost unnoticeably and yet persistently, shook his head from side to side. He spoke the language of an angry person whose jaw is as hard as a fist, and in between whose shoulderblades one could effortlessly crack nuts. He spoke the language of a sick person, to whom all talk of health seemed disrespectful towards his suffering, and the language of one racked with pain who, for a long time, had no longer searched for words for joy and desire, enjoyment and well-being. He knew the languages of the body, the voice and the breath, and also the ones of the organs, which indeed have their own words. From time to time the empathizer also told a story to the people who came to him. And such a story began, without fail, in the language of those with whom he spoke.While the empathizer spoke in the language of the stricken, flowing from his mouth came the air of the daring. The language of one who no longer cared became the language of one who is propelled by curiosity, and the expression of the suffering became the gesture of the calm and relaxed, who, minute by minute, forgets his pain. And the strange thing was that the people who listened to these stories changed with them. Sometimes this happened secretly and unnoticeably, and sometimes surprisingly, yet the changes had been long on the horizon. Such a story often became a bridge, widely stretched from the suffering of the people to their longed for goal. For the people around him it was a miracle – he simply called it a transformation. This transformation succeeded because the empathizer always secured the first pillar of the bridge near the cliff of their suffering – and never forgot the second pillar of the bridge on the side of desire.
Easter Eggs
How does one find Easter eggs? And why do some people search but not find? In case you are searching and have not yet found, allow me, as well as I can, to give you some hints.
Possibility one: very small children will not find any Easter eggs because they do not know what Easter eggs are. Sent off without a guide, they will most likely return with mushrooms and tufts of grass.
Possibility two: slightly biggerolder children know what Easter eggs look like but do not yet understand how to actually “search”. There are different ways of searching. And in case one himself isyou are an Easter egg, one yourself, you must know: A good way to find is to allow oneself to be found.
Possibility three: somewhat biggerstill older children know what Easter eggs look like and how one looks for them, but they possibly search at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Have you ever searched for Easter eggs in places where there are no Easter eggs anywherenone? Then you know what I mean.
Possibility four: the Easter eggs are there, but they look a bit different than they did the previous year. Perhaps one knowsyou know them as being red and blue, and this time they are dyed in camouflage green. The inner image of the eggs does not correspond to the outer one. A frequent reason why people do not find what they are searching for is because it does not look like what they are accustomed to.
Possibility five: the Easter eggs are there and look as they did the previous year, but they are covered by something else. For example, clumps of grass, a piece of bark or an old drainpipe are lying on top of them. What is truly valuable oftentimes hides itself. OneYou must search for it.
When one considersyou consider all these possibilities and still doesdo not find any Easter eggs, there is only one thing that can help: pick up a paint brush and paint, and colour your own Easter eggs, red, yellow and blue, and hide them all over the place. Preferably so that a small, colourful part always peeps out from the green meadow!
The Enemy’s Enemy
“The buffalo is the most dangerous animal in the bush. It is even more dangerous than the lion. A person without a weapon can perhaps survive an encounter with a lion, but a buffalo – as soon as it sees a person, it attacks!” he explained. “I have only heard of one person who survived such an encounter”, he continued. “This man saw a buffalo emerging from a thicket pounding towards him at a gallop. The man passed out from shock. When he regained consciousness, he saw a lion sitting on the dead buffalo, greedily eating its flesh. The lion had followed the tracks of its victim. It had foreseen the encounter between the buffalo and the man, and had attacked the buffalo the moment it was distracted by its own attack.”
Porridge
I went into an inn. It was somewhere in the Scottish highlands. “Greetings! Do you serve warm porridge for breakfast?” The woman behind the counter told me the right Scottish expression: “You mean: crowdie?” “Yes …” – “No.”
“… one does not need even words to make oneself understood, or indeed misunderstood…”
The Power of Images
He had been living alone for six years, and for six years he had been wishing for a girlfriend. He had tried everything. He had tried to meet the woman of his dreams at work or in a disco. He had met nice and beautiful women at parties and at concerts, but nothing beyond that had happened. He had answered lonely-hearts ads and placed ads in the paper himself. He had participated in group tours and had gone on holiday alone. He had allowed his friends to introduce him to interesting women or do anything they could think of which might help him. Hurt and frustrated, he finally told himself: “It’s like going up the smooth walls of a deep dry well. Whenever I have climbed up a few feet, I fall down again. My fingernails break. I fail, I fail, and again I fail. It’s hopeless.”
“Who knows”, he now heard a second voice within himself, “whether this inner image represents only a consequence to your futile efforts – or possibly the cause of them. Many things in this world move in circles.”
“Who knows”, said then a third voice, “if these pictures really contain any reality at all. Maybe it is like this: the well you’re in is just a film in your brain, and you’re just the animated cartoon producer.”
So he imagined the walls of the well opening up and becoming flatter and finding himself in a funnel which was getting wider and wider until. Finally he saw himself standing in the middle of a structure resembling a large music record. He enjoyed turning it into a cone, and then into a pillar on top of which he was standingwould stand. He decided on a flat cone with a platform for him to stand on as the structure he liked best. Two weeks later he got acquainted with a young woman. After a few weeks some problems occurred – some imbalance in their relationship as he described it. He remembered that he was still standing on the cone. He turned it into a flat surface and the problems disappeared.