Stop and See the Roses

Look at a lot of Facebook and Instagram posts and you’ll see picture after picture of people’s gardens, patches of wildflowers that someone discovered while on a walk, and roses. So many roses.

As part of our new family quarantine rituals, we go on evening strolls. The streets of Los Angeles feel like the streets of Jerusalem. So many people walking, biking, leisurely taking in the sounds of chirping birds and children laughing. We spend many of these walks staring at the roses that line the streets of Westwood. White, red, yellow, pink … roses that always may have been there but roses we feel like we are seeing for the very first time. The phrase usually goes, “Stop and smell the roses.” Forget about smelling. This may be the first time that we realized the roses were there.

For many of us, this may be the first time that we’re discovering aspects of our lives that were already there. It may be the realization that we love to cook, draw, write or meditate. For others, it is uncovering a facet of a relationship that needed some tending. Better understanding the needs of our children, the wants of our partners, the desires of our friends, the demands of our soul. Watching something bloom within ourselves that started merely as seeds. Seeing a strength, resilience, depth and buoyancy we didn’t know was there. Seeds that are growing into roses. Roses that we’re just beginning to see. Beginning to notice. Beginning to appreciate.

The famous song “Erev Shel Shoshanim” begins, “Evening of roses, Let’s go out to the grove. Myrrh, perfumes, and incense are a threshold at your feet. The night comes slowly. A breeze of roses blows. Let me whisper a song to you quietly. A song of love.”

In the oddest of ways, the world has slowed down. The evening breezes carry messages only our souls can hear. The roses beckon, reminding us of what is blooming within — perhaps hidden aspects of our human spirit that have been revealed for the first time.

Don’t waste this moment. Stop and see the roses. They always may have been there but now we finally have opened our eyes.