If a watched pot never boils, maybe the real miracle isn’t the boil itself but insted, the fact that I had a enough courage and trust to put it on the stove at all.
No fanfare. No guarantee. Just the soft pop of trust saying: I did enough to start.
Every now and then I vanish inside my own head. The critic sets up camp, chain-smoking questions and judgments: Did I talk too loud? Did I shrink too small? Will these seeds I’ve planted ever push up?
I feel tiny, just another girl in a crowd, my voice lost in static. Then I feel like there’s an ocean hammering inside me, begging to surge. What escapes is only a drip: a half-typed message, a single brave hello, a word on paper that feels paper-thin next to the tide behind it.
The drip says: not enough. The tide says: too much. So I stall— halfway between river and drought.
Under that, a quieter terror: what if they bloom? What if I finally have to tend something real? Plants die from over-love as fast as neglect. And who am I to think I can hold life steady?
Doubt circles like a seagull eyeing a kid’s melting ice-cream cone on a Labor Day beach, screaming for every last sticky drop.
I grab the teachers. Rumi murmurs: “The seed forgets it was ever a seed while it cracks.” Pema grins: “The joke is thinking we can hurry soup.” Jesus shrugs: “Lilies don’t even try.”
So I need to stop yelling at the water. I need to stop yelling at myself. I need to sit the critic down. Not to cage her. To hand her a mug.
Dear Holly. Dear Critic,
We don’t have to prove the steam. We only have to trust the flame.
I keep planting. I hit send. I show up. I let the ocean leak one honest drop at a time. I rest because I know even seas need slack tide.
One day the kettle will whistle. I won’t be staring. I’ll be across the room, folding laundry, or laughing at something small, and I’ll think, soft as breath:
Oh right. I knew.
The bloom isn’t a reward. It’s just the next honest thing.
And the pot? It wasn’t my job to make it boil. My job was to put the pot on the stove. To put the seeds in the ground.
If I can trust myself enough to do that, I can trust the rest of it.
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