You spend a majority of your life working toward something (say for example, a college degree) believing that once this thing has been attained you'll expereince nothing but smooth sailing. Then reality hits and you realize you have been chasing a lie.
In 2008 we graduated from the University of California, Berkeley believing the last 22 years of life had prepared us well for the "real world." Two and a half years later we are unemployed and forced to wonder what we worked so hard for.
However, when life doesn't go the way you plan you have a chance to discover new things. With every twist in the road you have the opportunity to choose how you will take this new journey, is the glass half-empty, or half-full?
In the summertime, the hills behind my parent's house blossom with weeds covered in little yellow flowers. The bright yellow buds and green stems bring color and vibrancy to an otherwise brown and dull chaparral landscape. They thrive, despite the notoriously polluted air and the dry hard earth. As the summer progresses, the plant spreads and begins to crowd the path. Soon the once beautiful flowers become annoying weeds whose throne branches scrap your legs if you aren’t careful as you pass.
The yellow flowers grow in stark contrast to the monochromatic plants lining the path. In the summer when water is scarce and the soil is hard and dry, the yellow flowers blossom despite the shortage of nutrients. On the one hand, the flowers represent something deceptively beautiful. A weed amongst the other plants, it symbolizes how something beautiful can be bad.
Yet, the flowers also serve as a reminder that even the things in life you don’t want, the weeds that start to crowd the path and make it difficult to traverse, can add something beautiful to the journey.
Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Do the weeds block your path or make it more interesting and beautiful?
Life is a journey, where that journey takes you depends on how you take it.
-CC and AJ
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