Symbolism

I was walking along a path at school yesterday, surrounded by buildings and feeling stressed and claustrophobic when I almost stepped on a white flower. It was a beautiful, daisy looking thing (sorry I'm not up on my flower nomenclature, it could have been a rose for all I know), and I'm not sure where exactly it came from. I assumed it was probably a victim of a weed-wacker but I couldn't find more of these flowers anywhere around. Thus, as the flower was unexpected and beautiful I decided to read symbolism in it. I decided it was the turning point of my life, that things were going to get better (or I was going to die, but thats for another entry).

There is a lot that can be said of this situation that I'm still wrestling with. It seems that we tend to force symbolism into situations and objects when we can't explain them. The flower was ambiguos and thus symbolic. It didn't fit within the parameters of how I think things should be, and its uniqueness becomes a symbol of empowerment. The problem with forced symbolism is that its empowerment is not real. When we find something unique we tend to hold onto it a bit too much. In relationships we find a unique human-being and begin to force symbolism into the interactions of the other person that prove their uniqueness and thus their "rightness" for you.

I held onto that flower the entire day and good things kept happening to me. I had a test postponed that I thought I was going to fail, I didn't have to go to work, and even the weather seemed perfect. But as I held onto the flower I began to wear it down. The flower couldn't withstand the force of my grip and it began to crumble. By the end of the day it was a messy pile of petals and a lonely stem. It seems to me that the forcing of symbolism that crushed my white flower, is the same thing that happens in many encounters and experiences we have everyday. We make too much of them, use them like a tool, and end up crushing the whole thing. If only we could let things remain ambiguous. If only we could treat the world as an end unto itself, maybe we wouldn't be crushing it so much.