Dandelions

"The only difference between a flower and a weed is judgment"  Wayne Dyer

 The month of May is when the world seems to come alive. One of the first bursts of color is the dandelions that begin to crop up in ditches, fields, and our lawns. You may be indifferent to this plant or carry some strong feelings toward it. Either way, it is impossible not to notice its presence.  As an elementary teacher or a parent of young children, many of you can relate to dandelions becoming a daily offering.  Students pick one or many flowers after each time outside to give as a gift when they arrive back indoors.  Always patiently waiting for the reaction of those receiving them. This week, as usual,  I started a make-shift vase to add the carefully chosen but often mangled dandelions.   I wasn't the only one to start to receive these gifts this week.  At the end of the school day, there are a few students who do not take the school bus and I wait with them for their parents to arrive.   On this day,  I watched one of my kindergarteners bend down to pick a bouquet of dandelions for their parent before running to meet them, as they stood by the cars lining the sidewalk.  Each student that followed did the same. It never fails to bring up big feelings for me because of the sweet sentiment.   In their own way, they are handing up a bouquet of the most authentic love with deep feeling, disguised as a weed. As I stand there witnessing this, I am instinctively choking back my emotional reaction when really I should just let a tear or two emerge.  Instead, I smile and point out what is happening to the staff member standing closest to me.  Of course, I couldn't help thinking about how feelings and dandelions have so much in common and how we can learn so much about ourselves from observing Nature.  

 Dandelions symbolize persistence and strong will. They are actually composed of many small ray flowers. Our feelings are composed of an array of emotions that we have attached a story to based on our experiences.   Dandelions continue to grow just from one flower and as a result, can cover an entire lawn over time from that initial weed. Feelings too can grow out of a single experience and clutter our entire mind with the stories we tell.  If we are being honest, there is really no way to get rid of dandelions that is not destructive to ourselves or others.  I think this holds true of our feelings as well. We need to accept that we will feel many feelings in every moment. Dandelions develop deep roots over time and extracting them or trying to extinguish them with chemicals,  or other means is not the best option.  Masking our feelings, denying them, or trying to separate from them with substances just allows them to develop deeper roots as well.    Some people have very intense physical reactions to Dandelions and the same can be true for people,  as a result of their feelings.  Just like fighting dandelions and wasting so much energy on getting rid of them, is just energy wasted,  the same goes for the energy we waste on denying, avoiding, reacting, or trying to get rid of big feelings.  As with dandelions, the only real way to deal with them is to take them on one by one and when we do we see many aspects that are powerful, healthy, and life-giving.   The dandelion's roots are used for tea, the leaves provide nutrition in a salad, and the flower creates seed, new life, and whimsy with bouquets, necklaces, and maybe even a crown or two.  Perhaps our feelings are providing us with gifts as well, and maybe there are underlying things we would not have noticed without the strong feelings.  It seems safe to say that we are not always emotional about the thing in front of us or happening to us but maybe our bodies are giving us a message like; this is not right for us, leave, set a boundary,  you need to rest, try something new, notice your fear and step around it or see its wisdom. Noticing the messages attached to the feelings is how they are processed.  It is how we are able to let go when we need to and step up or show up for things that our feelings let us know are really important.  We have been taught to be discerning when it comes to expressing our feelings. We think about how they will be received, what is too big, and how much is too little. Just as somewhere along the way we were told that dandelions were just a nuisance. I am not saying a person should demonstrate their feelings about everything or even share them with anyone that does not feel like a safe space but we may need to hold our own judgment on ourselves for feeling the multitude of things that come up for us each and every day. Our feelings like Dandelions have a cycle and we must trust that they are serving us whether we are labeling them good or bad.  If we dial back the negative feelings we also tend to dial back our joyful ones and then this just looks like indifference.  It seems completely unrealistic that we should not have big feelings about what is happening in the world around us and our inability to change these circumstances. It also seems counterintuitive not to act on feelings about injustices we are witnessing, or express our elation for the good in our life.  I don't believe we were ever meant to become complacent about things that matter just as we were never meant to carry all of life's problems on our shoulders.  I listened to a woman interviewed this week that was saying that compassion fatigue is real because it is not humanly possible to be involved in all of the world's sorrows. We have gotten used to tempering our feelings and detaching from them and this has become normalized.     I could give you the grocery list breakdown of what seems to be the triggers of the big feelings we are experiencing as a collective as well as our own individual ones but I think it is just  as validating and comforting to know that none of us are alone in what we are feeling.   Like dandelions, we have to expect that these big feelings will continue to show up in unexpected places at times and that they will grow and cycle through as they were meant to.  Some of our feelings can be as wild and organic as dandelions tend to be and in those fields of feelings  we can sift through the weeds before  choosing what needs to be let go

Can you remember the joy that dandelions evoked for you as a child?  When you saw them come up for the first time, did you pick them to give by the bunches to someone you loved?  What about noticing how deeply rooted they were and how much joy there was in blowing their seed puffs to make a wish, believing they held some kind of magic that could fulfill our longing.   Children love dandelions and see their beauty. They also allow all of the big feelings and don't hold them inside and I believe they are healthier for it.  

  Whether we are offering up or being offered a suitcase of our feelings or someone else's or a bouquet of weeds, in this moment may we see the gift, the honor of someone trusting us with their vulnerability, and may we allow the dandelions of the emotions to be accepted, processed, and expressed with ease. Perhaps we can sift through to create a bouquet that we can stand in front of another with and in this way,  share all of the highs and lows of being human and big feeling in a world that may expect otherwise.