Pink rose buds unfurl against the creamy stucco wall of the garden shed, soaking in the powerful July sun. They are late -- June-pink blossoms incongruous next to the hotter reds, oranges and fuchsias of July. The bush blossoms anyway; where yesterday one lone flower hid amongst the branches, today dozens bejewel the green leaves.
Clichés abound about late-blooming; usually, the term is spoken disparagingly, used to insinuate that its subject lacks ambition and direction. To be a late-bloomer is to miss the achievement-runged ladder that society uses to measure success. And in our society, one's visible success equates dangerously with one's worth.
I wonder how much damage this perception does in our society. Working with youth, I know already the intense pressure put on teens to decide a life path early, so as to get a jump on the prerequisite classes and activities designed to lead to the greatest success. Teens as young as 16 "stress out" because they don't yet know what they want to do with their lives. At 16, I was lucky to know what I wanted to do on Saturday night! Worse is the shame felt by college-age young adults who remain unsure of a career path; still worse, the desperation felt by adults locked in a career they no longer, or never did, enjoy. In a society marked by achievement, acquisition, and ambition, those who require time to determine their life path, or who explore various directions, earn ridicule at best, contempt at worst.
I'm a late bloomer. In my mid-40s, I'm in my second career. Both careers have been rewarding, and I've enjoyed moderate success in them, but a mover and shaker I am not. Last fall, I published by first book, the product of ten years of work -- not quite the best example of a well-articulated 5-year plan. My book has earned its own treasures -- respect of colleagues, conversations with readers, opportunities to shed light on a lifestyle -- but its monetary rewards will hardly justify the years spend writing it.
And that's OK. Being a late bloomer has gifted be with time to live and to lose, time to get clear about my own definition of success.
Success for a rose bush manifests in blossoms, whether one or many, early or late. We humans arbitrarily decide that a successful rose bush produces profuse blooms at its designated time, but the bush has its own wisdom. My bush blossomed two weeks late because conditions in mid-June -- cool, drenching rains, battering wind and hail, cold nighttime temperatures -- simply weren't right. To have blossomed on schedule would have meant losing those blossoms to hail or cold.
Like the rosebush, I simply wasn't ready to bloom early in my writing career. My own conditions weren't right: I lacked the humility, the courage, and the purpose I'd need to have a book "out there" for others to read. My frame of reference is writing, of course, but I think that presenting any creative endeavor to the public eye requires a degree of maturity.
Also like the rosebush, I've had to trust my own wisdom regarding what success looks like. When I started writing nearly 20 years ago, success looked like the bestseller list and a six-digit bank account balance. Today, success wears a different face: the hours spend digging in to research and chasing a thought from start to finish, attempting to string words and phrases into a delicate net that capture the thought without obscuring its beauty. Success looks like meeting the eyes of a stranger during a presentation and immediately feeling the spark of shared understanding. Success looks liks signing the title page of my book to a dear old friend, one who encouraged me when I could no longer encourage myself. Success looks like spending an afternoon sitting on my deck, jotting notes for a new essay while my kids play and the late-blooming roses nod in the July breeze.
But don't misunderstand. I still dream of a writing career more solid than the few hours a week I carve from an already-packed schedule. I still yearn for a time when "going to work" means going into the office down the hall, not driving 40 miles. I still hope to travel and speak, bringing the lessons and wisdom of this agricultural lifestyle to groups of people who I believe will benefit from remembering their connections to the land, to fellow creatures, and to themselves.
But that is my dream, not necessarily my goal for today. I don't know exactly how that dream will manifest. Conventional life-coaching wisdom would tell me to break that dream apart, divide it into attainable steps, give myself a deadline for reaching each. But what if, in focusing on the small pieces of the dream, I lose sight of the magic of the whole? If I miss a step, or a deadline, will that mean I've lost the dream? In a way, this path to success is like focusing on the stray blades of grass growing up through the rosebush's branches instead of seeing the pink and green glory of the bush.
And so, I work. I write and water, wait and weed. I give the rosebush what I think it needs, knowing that the perfect conditions are only supplied by God. I give my writing what I think it needs, as well -- or at least, I do so to the best of my ability. The rest of the dream -- the measurable successes, the publications, the rose blossoms -- will come, in time.
Sometimes, the blooms that come late are the ones that smell the sweetest.
