Daffodils

I love daffodils. Years ago I planted a few in the side garden and every Spring they pop their heads up in a bloom of yellow optimism.

I was in grade 7. Mr Marsh didn't go home until 4.30, so if you hadn't finished your work you'd 'stay behind' or you'd been mucking around you were 'kept in'. My penance for mucking around one day was to learn a few verses of William Wordsworth's 'Daffodils'.

The first and last verses are stuck in there almost as firmly as times tables and the story of the Three Little Pigs.

But that's not the end of today’s story. Here’s a moving tribute by Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards that dropped into my inbox a few years ago.

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Daffodil Principle

Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards

Several times my daughter Carolyn had telephoned, "Mother, you must come and see the daffodils before they are over."

Finally, I promised, reluctantly. I'd driven only a few miles when the road was covered with wet, gray fog.
 

As I slowly executed the hazardous mountain turns, I was praying to reach the turnoff. When I finally walked into Carolyn's house, I said, "Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! There is nothing that I want to see bad enough to drive another inch in this weather!"

"I'll drive," Carolyn offered.

In a few minutes, we were back on the Rim-of- the-World road heading over the top of the mountain.

We parked in a small parking lot adjoining a little stone church. I saw a pine needle covered path, and an inconspicuous, hand lettered sign "Daffodil Garden." I followed Carolyn down the path.

Then we turned a corner. It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it down every crevice and over every rise. Even in the mist, the mountainside was radiant, clothed in massive drifts and waterfalls of daffodils. A charming path wound through the garden with several resting stations, with Victorian wooden benches and great tubs of tulips.

It didn't matter that the sun wasn't shining. Five acres of flowers!

"But who?" I asked Carolyn. "Just one woman," Carolyn answered. "That's her home."

On the patio we saw a poster. "Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking" was the headline.

The first answer was simple. "50,000 bulbs."
 

The second was, "One at a time, by one woman, two hands, two feet, and very little brain."

The third was, "Began in 1958."

There it was. The Daffodil Principle. For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than forty years before, had begun, one bulb at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop. Planting one bulb at a time, year after year, this unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived.

One day at a time, she had created something of extraordinary magnificence, beauty, and inspiration. The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles of celebration.

That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time, often just one baby-step at a time and learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things. We can change the world.

"It makes me sad in a way," I admitted to Carolyn. "What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years? "Just think what I might have been able to achieve!"

My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way. "Start tomorrow," she said.

She was right. It's so pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask, "How can I put this to use today?"

Use the Daffodil Principle. Stop waiting. There is no better time than right now to be happy. Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

So work like you don't need money. Love like you've never been hurt, and dance like no one's watching.

Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin.

Regards and best wishes

John Miller

Daily Health Break

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