Just Listen

This last week it was so unusually pleasant and warm outside that I wandered out to the back patio and just breathed it all in. It was more cozy than any other December day in memory and I couldn't believe that just a few days before a foot or more of crusty snow had blanketed the ground. How fantastic it was to see my sweet green lawn again, freed from it's icy prison and basking in the afternoon sunshine.

I would have expected that the ground would be a wet, soggy mess, but no, it appeared to be dry. So mesmerized, was I, that I decided to lay down on the lawn and soak up the sun while I had the chance. I lay on my back with my eyes closed, just breathing. It was a quiet day, and soon, I could hear the sweet little blades of grass all around me whispering to one another.

One particular blade of grass was louder than the others and I turned my head this way and that until my ear was tilted just over that one brilliant spindle. The creature told me his life story that day. As I listened most intently, he told me of how he began as a young sprout, against all odds, struggling to find his place in the sun. Of how he grew, working hard to fight disease, blight, intense cold and blistering heat. That sometimes it would be a week with no water and he would begin the wither and think that perhaps this time he might not make it. But then rain, oh glorious rain would pour down upon him and he would soak it all up like a sponge and praise the mother earth again.

Most days, he said, his life was uneventful, and many times he would feel that he was just one more blade of grass in the seemingly endless sea of my lawn. But then magical things would happen.

Some mornings, if the conditions were just right, a dewdrop would form right on the end of each and every blade of grass in the lawn and they would glisten like diamonds in the sunlight for as far as the eye could see. Then, as the dewdrop grows fatter, it does a slow waltz down the entire blade of grass, finally ending its sweet descent at the roots.

He told me about once, when a brilliant blue butterfly landed on him and rested there for some time, gently fluttering it's wings. That butterfly was the most beautiful living creature that the grass had ever seen and the purply shadow cast by the sun through majestic wings made the grass feel sweet and warm.

After some thought, I realized that this single blade of grass is no different than I.