As Long As The Foliage Is Plentiful
fourth year jacob porter
photo by lauren friedlander
Imagine.
You‘re floating in an empty black void.
Eventually, you manage to find solid ground. Your feet land on a space of black and suddenly, you’re walking.
And everywhere you walk, flowers pop from underneath your feet. Gorgeous, simple, magnificent flowers. Daffodils. Daisies. Roses. For a time, it’s beautiful.
As time passes, the flowers become more complex - from sunflowers to chrysanthemums, delphiniums. These, too, are beautiful.
But one day, you turn. You see the spot you first landed. You see the very first flower that ever sprouted at your feet.
It’s dying. So are most of the flowers near your genesis.
So you panic.
You look at the flowers right behind you, and suddenly, you’re determined to keep up the legacy of their beauty. In your mind, maybe if you start running, you can produce so much beauty that no one will see the parts of your legacy that are starting to crumble.
So you run.
You run for years. The flowers become even more complex than before: snapdragons,hyacinths, gladiolus, anemones. You stop worrying about whether they’re beautiful or not - as long as the foliage is plentiful, that’s all that matters. But after a while, you get exhausted, and you turn around.
The flowers have become more complex. Colors, shapes and patterns that don’t even exist yet. Some of them glow. Some are alive, and have started walking on their own, little mutant flowers falling in line behind them. But as you look back into the void, the flowers at the beginning of your walk have all died. You couldn’t stop it.
And that is okay.
View this as a metaphor for whatever you wish - social overextension, overwork, the fear that you have to live up to a legacy that you don’t quite understand. All of this is to say that sometimes, it is okay to stop running.
Friendships end. Relationships crumble. People die, and things change. Sometimes, all you can do is walk at your own pace and know even in the face of decay, there is still more beauty to be created.
It’s okay to take a break. Sit down. And when you’re ready, take a walk.
The flowers will eventually die. They always do.
But there are so many new ones to be made.
So keep walking.