Adversity's
Flower
“The
flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of
all.”
Walt
Disney Company—Mulan
Every day when Liza and I
take our walk, I see flowers growing through cracks in the pavement.
Birmingham is a hot-weather kind of place. By the time we get home
from our walk we are both dripping sweat, panting and wrung out. But
this little plant sits in the middle of that hot, dry asphalt and
revels in the sun and rain. How can that be?
I know lots of flowers
that have bloomed in adversity—I'll bet you do to. So many people
of my generation grew up on the margins of society, to families
scraping a living out of whatever they could. People who'd come
through the great depression, fought the second world war, and had
the good fortune to return home when so many didn't. They were
altered, and like so many of our veterans today, disoriented. How can
you be dodging bullets and bombs, and praying for your very life one
day, and the next, plop down in suburban America where the worst
thing that can happen is the air conditioner dying on a hot day. How
could they possibly relate? But, somehow, most of them did and still
do.
Adversity is not easy to
pin down—certainly, poverty is high on the list. But there are many
flowers among us firmly planted in the soil of success, who take
themselves out of the game too young. Naming our beautiful stars who
have opted out is too painful; just this week Kate Spade. Adversity
is not always about money or disability; it is also a state of mind.
I think of folks like Christopher Reeve and Stephen Hawking, and the
young men and women I see playing wheelchair rugby at my gym.
Adversity changed the trajectory of their lives, but they found ways
to thrive in their cracks in the pavement.
I wonder about you. Did
you bloom from the hardness of stone? Did you overcome adversity to
accomplish what no one believed you could? Are you stronger and rarer
than most? Sometimes adversity gives us what privilege cannot—a
strong will to live and the determination to thrive wherever we are
planted.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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