Wild Azalea

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don't turn your face away.

Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.

Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen

nor the one life that
waits beyond all the others.

"All the True Vows", David Whyte (excerpted)

One of the treasures of spring in the woods is coming across a native azalea. This modest cousin of the widely recognized azalea, prefers the quiet woodland understory, stretching long gangley arms out which fill with clusters of intensely scented flowers in the spring. Sometimes referred to as a 'flame azalea' because often the flowers are a lovely pale orange, it is can also be a soft yellow or pink. Recently I have found them for sale in nurseries but they seem so out of place next to the flash of their hybridized cousins. I can't see them flourishing in subdivisions. They aren't made to conform. They need the wildness of the woods.

There is something very precious and important about wildness. The author in his forward to The American Boy's Handbook, writes that in dealing with the lives of little boys, it is good to always remember they are all essentially, savages. Most mothers would not need to be told that, and certainly that remark draws a knowing smile. But it also conjures up a small truth. Setting aside the need for schooling and manners and social graces, there exists in all of us something that is wild and free and unless it is nurtured, can be extinguished. We are lessened when that happens. We lose a vitality that is necessary to our individuality and our humanity. We lose who we are.

We are not azaleas, but sometimes our lives do become so hybridized and tamed for the sake of conformity that we lose touch with the original part of ourselves. We forget that wildness is not sameness. It is rich with difference and originality. Tolerance is achieved by integrating diversity rather than extinguishing it. Maybe the next time you are confronted with the maddening quirkiness of a colleague or friend, the exasperating habits of your seven year old, or you feel a longing for something familiar you can't quite name, you might let yourself wonder about what in you is still wild.