The lotus in our small pond has begun its quiet ascent.
Each morning I check its progress — a millimeter, maybe two — and I think about how the most beautiful things in life never announce their arrival. They simply appear, fully formed, as if they had always been there, waiting for us to notice.
I have been thinking about what it means to grow like a lotus. To root in the dark, in the silt, in the unseen places, and to reach patiently toward the light. To bloom not with fanfare but with a quiet opening, a slow unfurling that says: I was always becoming this.
The lotus does not compare itself to the lily beside it. It simply blooms.
We spend so much of our lives trying to rush our blooming. We want to arrive, to be finished, to be the thing we imagine we are becoming. But the garden teaches a different lesson: that growth is slow, that roots matter, and that the most beautiful things cannot be hurried.
