Birth

Filled with the nourishing wetness of zest, I push against the life-giving decaying humus. I burst my silken cloak and lay myself bare with the confidence that I will grow. The harsh heat above and the patient earth below gaze at me with questioning eyes:
Are you sure you want to do this? After all the security of being well ensconced in a tough epidermis, impervious to the ruthless world which feeds you for no more a favour than the fruits and flowers you shall bear them till your natural decay, would you, who contain the wisdom of several generations, want to abrade against the very soil which promises to protect you, rise for a purpose unknown or at best one which is steely destined?
I cleave my tender green coat and push it apart with my cotyledons and embrace the dark world fragranced by the petrichor of promise and a world beyond. The umber of the grains lie lazily, awarding nothing but stiff resistance. Is this how one must grow, breaking through strata of impeding forces, constructive by no means but obstructive by instinct? Is this the world I must face, tiny individuals who collectively scrape my resolve to be perfect, to accomplish what I aspire?
Water trickles down to break my strife and I fill my veins with this divine impetus. Tenuous roots offer me the strength to push against this lumbering earth on which I intend establishing my worth, my full.
I watch my roots nudge the grains and expand to push them apart in order to establish their rightful footing. My zeal and energy take form as a slight and pointed shoot. How rightly they call it so? Shoot. Nothing else could describe the fervid effort of mine. As my roots and cotyledonous arms brace me for my heavenward growth, I patiently press against the soil that bears me so possessively. I wince as sharp corners cut through my shoot, but grow I, nevertheless, do. A faint unknown seems to wait for me. What is there beyond the world of burnt colours and nourishing rot? Will it be the same onerous brown ad infinitum? Will this toil be worth it? What if I wish to return to my early days? I look at the torn epidermis now nourishing me. Is this the divine will to grow or a devilish plot to lead me deceptively towards my own ruin?

I do what comes naturally to me.
I rise.
I stay steady.
I steady myself and pierce the enormous earth with my pinpoint resolve.
I must give my fullest.
I can only do this.
I can only rush strongly, patiently towards my calling.
I would rather do what is instinctively mine, than lie in foreign inactivity.

As the grains fall apart unable to contain my determination, I break free with my roots deeper in the soil than I have ever been, but my head held high for I have been honest to my calling, to my love, to my passion... to myself.

And if this is what I should get for my single-minded march, this beautiful firmament with its never-repeated tapestry, this breeze with a fresh song every hour, these scented whispers from mustard fields leaping into the green velvets of long stalked paddy, this bliss to offer myself, in my entirety... then I shall do this again, and again.

I would do this even if I arrived on a dark and foreboding world of less engaging sensual wonders.

Isn't this the wisdom that I silently bore?

This post is dedicated to a dear friend who readily suggested that I write on such matters... Here is to you, dear void!