Day 16: Seek, Breathe, Play....Surfing Daffodils

Last night I had a dream I was surfing...really surfing. I was out on a long board with my boys and I was catching waves. It was fantastic. I attempted to surf last year, kneed up a few times...and can tell you that I have utmost respect for anyone who surfs! It works every part of your body and is as much of mental challenge as it is physical. I know that my dream was preempted by reading Chasing Mavericks to the boys each night. We read one or two chapters and I promised that at the end of the book I'll go and get the move so we can watch it. There have been several quotes that have stuck with me as I've read the book "You better ask yourself, what do you want to leave behind? The truth of who you really are… or just some words on a page? All that stuff that's burning deep down inside of you, what is that? That stuff you can't even look at because it scares you too much." and "Frosty: What's going on inside of you, Jay? What are you afraid of? You've got a chance to change everything. Take it. This is about more than just surfing. This is about choices you make in life. This is about finding that one thing that sets you free. You need to believe in yourself or none of this matters." and "The ones who push the limits sometimes discover that the limits sometimes push back." - Frosty But my favorite so far has been tonight's quote: "You can fight things head on, or you can observe the laws of nature...Because if you look hard enough, there's always a way through it." – Frosty.....So odd that tonight's quote would come after taking my boys to the daffodil field for a very bitterly cold photo shoot. The daffodils, which normally "under the laws of nature" would follow the sun...but today they all had their backs turned away from the sun. It was bizarre to see and made for a challenging photo shoot but we were able to get through it. It was cold, the weather was not optimal for weeks, ice storms, snow storms...and torrential downpours have kept the daffodils at bay and even now they were fighting to bloom in a sea of yellow. And here comes another storm, more wind, rain, possibly a flurry or two? These delicate flowers have found their way against all odds to burst through the ground and battle whatever has been thrown at them to spread their happiness in waves of yellow stars splashing across the field of green. Why did they turn their back and defy the law of nature this afternoon? Just like in the book, Jay was paddling in the churning surf and was relentlessly tossed back onto the shore instead of looking towards the rocks and seeing the path nature had placed to make paddling out into the waves effortless. How many times in life have you felt that you were paddling and not getting anywhere? How many times have you tried and tried again but seemed to get tossed? How many times have you done things a certain way over and over again and when you finally stopped trying...and when you stopped trying.....you find a way through it. Sometimes you are trying so hard, that you sometimes need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, to see that there was another way. And sometimes, you just stop trying and find what you thought was important wasn't worth focusing on at all. Like the daffodils that turned their backs to the sun...it isn't normal, but maybe they were turning to say hello to the moon? Who knows? Did it make them less beautiful? Absolutely not. Maybe they know more about where they are turning than the ones that that have studied them and determined their natural path is to follow the sun. Or maybe, today, maybe those daffodils decided not to focus on the sun....perhaps, we stood in field of thousands of yellow rebel flowers that said, we don't have to follow anyone...we can stand on our own, even as they stood together ;) Yes, I think those daffodils have found their way through many things, and in the end they found what to focus on. Just a little flora "food" for thought.