Only A Short Walk

I came across a curious sight yesterday. It was late at night, I had just come back to school after a day filled with the faces of people I deeply love. I expected that I was smiled-out. How much joy can one person expect out of a single twenty-four hours?

I stepped into my room, put down my bag, and heard my phone vibrate. There was a single message from my friend, Mr. M. The message was simple, and certainly strange:

“You should look at the water fountain when you get the chance. There is something simplistically beautiful that made me think of you.”

What was on the fountain? Paint? Graffiti? People at my school seem to be fond of scribbling obscure metaphysical messages in a particular staircase, perhaps they were expanding their efforts. I walked out of my hall, not bothering to re-shoe my feet. If an administrator saw me, I would get in trouble. Self-Endangerment, they call it. Punishment for hurting yourself. Kind of a funny concept.

Approaching the fountain, it looked normal enough, I almost turned back, thinking that whatever Mr. M had spotted was no longer there. Then, since I had come all this way already, I padded up to it nonetheless.

Then I saw it.

The seed never stood a chance. It wasn’t just that it lacked the nutrients of the soil. It was in a spot too frequented. A seed in the water fountain? The first person to come by for a drink would snatch it up, disgusted. It would no doubt get thrown onto the ground and trampled. But it grew nonetheless. It grew because the water was good, and it grew because it didn’t know how to do anything else.

I wished desperately for my camera, but even if I ran back to my room to get it, it hadn’t been charged in days, and wouldn’t document the little miracle. It was something I was privileged to see for a minute, and was gone the next time I walked by, this morning.

I don’t have a picture for the plant. But maybe I don’t need one. Maybe life is a picture for it. How often to we sent out a shoot because the water is good, and sending out shoots is all we know how to do? How often is the situation really as hopeless as a plant trying to grow in a water fountain?

Or perhaps I get too much out of the simplistically beautiful in life.