tiny clusters of flowers

I am standing in woodland, here in the south of India, and next to me is a sapling. It's a type of tree that's very common around here, though I don't know its name. What has caught my attention, though, today, is that this sapling has a couple of tiny clusters of yellow flowers – very delicate and beautiful. What amazes me, though, is I had not noticed the flowers on this type of tree before. This might be because the flowers only come rarely. Looking around me just now, I see many more examples of this type of tree, and I can only spot one other with some of these flowers. So it may be that they don't come so often. Even so, I would have expected to have noticed these flowers before.

Standing here, these flowers are reminding me of a couple of things. One is that there's always something new to discover. It doesn't matter how old one grows, or how much of the world one has seen, there's always something new. Nature is so diverse. 

It's one of its great beauties.

The other thing, though, that this tiny little cluster of flowers is telling me, is to remember to keep my eyes open. I'm sure there have been hundreds of occasions when I could have seen and appreciated such flowers. Only I must have been going about my business habitually, rather in a rush, not stopping to actually look at what's around me. And so I have been missing, all this time, missing the beauty of these flowers, missing the joy that they give me.

It's a good lesson, a reminder to keep my eyes open, to walk slowly, to stop often, to look around with open eyes, to really see what is here. And when I say see, of course I don't just mean what I can see with my eyes. What can I hear? What can I smell and taste and feel? But more than this even: what's the atmosphere? What's the feeling of the moment?

Ahh, to really sense this moment, to do it justice, we have to stop. We have to physically stop moving, and also stop the mental chatter, and stop living life from habit, at least for a moment, just to really be present with this moment, with what's around me now. And when we do this, such moments of presence never fail to be blessed moments, divine moments.

I thank these two clusters of yellow flowers for their reminder, a timely reminder: to be present, and that there's always something new.