Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?
There is a quote I read for the first time a couple years ago that I still often think of; I even have an image of it as a widget on my phone so I can see it every day. I am still unable to find who said this quote, but is as follows:
“You will inspire some, and trigger others. Both are medicine.”
As a recovering people pleaser, this quote almost felt like it gave me permission to just be. I always knew the whole “you can’t please everyone,” quote, but this one hit my soul in a different way.
Today I got a couple new tattoos which has of course left me feeling very happy! I love getting tattoos, and the best part was I had a gift certificate which was able to cover everything! I got a floral half moon on my back, and I got the quote “live like the flowers” on my collar bone.
The quote has a few inspirations, but overall the meaning behind it is to just be. There’s a quote from Zen shin that reads: “a flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it; it just blooms.” I read that quote years ago and it always sat with me. As I’ve grown older I’ve cared less and less about what others think of me, and now I rarely compare myself to others.
There’s another quote I read that was “live like flowers; wild, beautiful and drenched in sunlight.” Overall I’ve always felt more at home in nature; I love going on walks or just floating in the water. As a kid I was always climbing different trees around the apartments that I grew up in, and now I enjoy hiking when I can and just walking through the park.
Other quotes about flowers touch on the fact that when a flower isn’t blooming you don’t throw it away, you change the environment and/or the way in which you care for the flower. If you water the flower and make sure it gets proper sunlight and nutrients, the flower typically will bloom beautifully. Taking that knowledge and applying to yourself as a human can make a world of a difference in the way in which we “bloom.”
From Dark to Light 