Last Sunday was my birthday, my 21st. I haven’t had time this week to really sit down and think, being busy with uni and conferences and volunteering and travelling. But I’m sitting at the train station, sun shining, jazz playing, and I’m ready to put some things down on paper. Or my phone more accurately.
It seems odd to say I’ve turned 21, because in reality, I feel so much older. I’ve always been mature for my age, and get along far better with people older than me than with people my own age. I guess I’ve got particular priorities in life that differ from others’.
But I was thinking about this bunch of flowers my mum got for me for my birthday celebrations, and how after a while they fade away. The years pass by, and though it feels like nothing has changed, I have. I’ve become more independent, more adventurous, more grateful, more true to myself. And the urgency to make something of my life becomes stronger. Just as a flower blooms and dies, so too do we. I suppose it comes back to that Mary Oliver poem, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
I love flowers at any stage, budding, blooming, or wilting. But I think it’s when flowers are dying that they are the most dramatic, with a story to tell. They have an unending symbolism, but a subversive beauty about them too, elegance and form and colour lasting to the very end. Flowers are a forever fascination for me. That something so simple can have something to say is just so impossibly wondrous.
Birthdays are a weird thing for me, because I’m not a particular fan of the attention or the fuss. But 21 feels special because my closest friends and family, some of whom have watched me grow up since birth (which is rather weird to think about really), have made me feel so treasured. It gives me such an appreciation for the fact that they are in my life, supporting, encouraging, loving me.
It makes me think of a field of flowers going on and on into the horizon, and how they’re all just minding their own business and growing strong, and yet together, they’re one of the most beautiful things on this earth.
So, here’s to a 21st year, chasing dreams, following belief, hope, and love, breathing deeply, and most of all, to the beautiful things in life.
-nat 🥀🖤