We Are Like the Lotus

We grow best in mud

One of the many water lilies blooming on the lake at Eyre Park in Albany, Western Australia.

There’s lots of mud at Evergreen this time of year.

I'm sitting outside, overlooking the winter lake area. The water has receded almost to the northern fence line, leaving a mucky surface over which, once again, grass is slowly growing. In the meantime, swamp hens fossick for tasty stems and roots of water plants, ibis and herons plunge beaks into brown sludge and spoonbills swish their way through the deeper parts.

As I watch the play of life before me, I'm glad that I don’t have to spend my days in slimy, murky, dirty mud.

Then I recall the pink lotus flowers I saw in Hangzhou’s famous West Lake (Xi Hu) in China several years ago; yellow water lilies peeping out at the sun in Queen’s Gardens in Perth just before Christmas, and those flowering in the pond at Eyre Park in Albany, which I saw last week.

These stunning flowers were growing in mud, couldn’t exist without mud, are a result of mud.

And, thinking along these lines, I realise that I also grow in mud, couldn’t exist without mud, am a result of mud: the mud – the murkiness, dirtiness, sliminess – of everyday life.

Life isn’t a pristine, sparkly fairy tale with not a speck of dirt in sight.

I was born in a whoosh of blood and body fluids. As an infant I pooped and spewed, and still do. I need to shower my sweaty body and wash clothes I’ve worn. I need to carefully select precious bits of wisdom from the often dank, dark situations that arise in human relationships. Plunge into dubious situations, not knowing the outcome. Swish through world happenings which are beyond my control. And one day my body will disintegrate into the earth, each particle of what once was me subject to the whims of decay.

The Lotus and You

None of us are hothouse flowers. We feel the heat of the sun. We dry out. Winds of change sway our branches, bend our stems, and toss our petals. There is no escape. We’re rooted in the mud of human existence.

But, ah! What beauty emerges!

Exquisite flowers of generosity, kindness, laughter, compassion, wisdom and love – all of them emerging from our life experiences.

I keep sitting in the garden chair, feeling a kinship with swamp hens, herons, ibis, spoonbills, water lilies and lotus blooms.

Some say we’re made of stardust. But we’re also made of mud.

With love, Marlane