I was invited to pick as many flowers as I wanted, and I did.
Under a gray September sky, I wound my way through fields of dahlias, cosmos, sunflowers, amaranth, asters, and scores of flowers I don’t know the names of. Enraptured by the colors and textures, I filled the large bucket I’d brought. As I picked, awed by my good fortune, a voice in my head cautioned, too much. Too much. You’re being greedy.
I worried that I was taking advantage of the farmer’s generosity, that she hadn’t anticipated how many flowers I’d pick, that she’d expected me to demonstrate more restraint. A knot of guilt settled at the base of my throat.
I got home and turned on the radio. My favorite country show was on the local public radio station. I clipped stems and divided them into vases and mason jars in the gathering darkness to the yearning strains of fiddle and steel guitar. I’d planned to take just a few to decorate a wedding cake I was making and was surprised by my own voracity. Now I had more flowers than I could manage. I decided to redeem myself by sharing them.
I brought a finished bouquet inside, destined, I’d decided, for my friend Lauren. Arranged haphazardly, in the half-dark, it had somehow turned out perfect—better than it would have, I was sure, had I had the opportunity to deliberate and second-guess my instincts. I stood before it baffled and awed. How had I been given these flowers for free? How had I lucked into such opulence, such richness and ravishing beauty?
I caressed the dahlias’ pert and juicy petals and inhaled the fragrance of some small, delicate blooms I couldn’t name. Their petals brushed my face with exquisite softness. I started to cry.
I’ve spent much of my life feeling unworthy, disinclined to believe the nice things others say about me while enmeshing myself with those who reaffirm and feed my darkest self-perceptions. Self-loathing and destructive relationships no longer circumscribe my existence. But I still wonder, daily, “Why me?” Why do I have more than enough while others are deprived? Why do I have a life of ease while others are afflicted? Who am I, to have been spared so much hardship and blessed with such affluence, despite my defects and deficits?
Standing before that bouquet, touching and being touched by flowers that had been lovingly cultivated and freely given by someone I’d just met, I was overwhelmed by supernatural grace.
And I realized it didn’t matter why. The “why,” indeed, is unknowable, and maybe nonexistent: In a universe of infinite random possibilities, I’ve been blessed with extraordinary abundance. In that moment, I realized (not for the first time, but perhaps more deeply) that my lifelong practice of self-flagellation for having what others lack, of neutralizing joy with guilt and pleasure with shame, is nonsensical. Not only does it reduce the quality of my brief and improbable experience as an embodied being—it diminishes my capacity for sharing with others.
I’d always dismissed “calling in abundance” and reveling in one’s blessings as an embarrassing attempt to obscure complacent self-indulgence with a fig leaf of shallow, self-serving spirituality. But how can I share my gifts if I don’t allow myself to experience them as such? How can I withhold from myself what I yearn so deeply for everyone to have? Why should I alone be excluded from the ranks of the deserving?
That night, love and beneficence spoke to me through the flowers and flooded my awareness with the certainty that I am permitted to experience, and even celebrate, the goodness in my life. That to doubt my worth and contort myself with shame is a sacrilegious repudiation of a miracle. That I can absorb the beauty that’s available to me, here, now. And that I can share it, freely and joyfully, with others.
The next day, I delivered bouquets to my neighbors, my parents, and my friend. I kept one for myself, too.