My little rut of life.

Now here was a challenge indeed. I suspect of all the blooms I have tried to paint this was the most difficult of all. The petals are all so perfect on the dahlia, and al twisting and bending in what ends up an almost perfection of bloom.

My father and a friend of his grew both chrysanthemums and dahlias. They used two greenhouses and over the winter grew the following year's blooms.  Only now do I fully understand that they were in both of these flowers trying to achieve a kind of perfection. I in my youthful wisdom thought that they were both stuck in a rut growing the same flowers year after year never noticing that each year they were producing bigger and better flowers and producing new variations of colours.

Now here I am all those years later stuck in a kind of rut as I said of them. My life follows a very regular pattern and some things I do every day is just taken for granted. I walk and even though I have a variety of routes and I see different things on each of the routes they all measure somewhere between 7..5 and 8 miles. I paint every day and I am sure that you the viewer must be thinking when is he going to break free and paint something different?

I meditate and I do Tai Chi. Tai Chi follows a very set pattern of moves and this brings a sense of comfort in its routine. Yes, I am a man set in my ways with my routines and strategies of life, and it brings me a sense of security. 

But painting this gave me a memory of those days when I said my father and his friend were stuck in a rut. They were far from it and it is possible that some of those lovely blooms we see came from their diligent attempts to produce perfection.

A man once bought a new radio, brought it home, placed it on the refrigerator, plugged it in, turned it to Radio 4 where he could find talk programmes and the daily news updates. 

He then pulled all the knobs off! 

He had already tuned in all he ever wanted or expected to hear. Some live and relationships are "rutted" and rather dreary because either or both  have yielded to the tyranny of the inevitable, "what has been will still be." 

The real adventure of life will come when we stay open to newness. Stay open to change. 

Openness is essentially the willingness to grow, a distaste for ruts, eagerly standing on tip-toe for a better view of what tomorrow brings.

maybe a little shake of routine is good for us and challenges us to a better today. But I have a funny feeling that when I arise tomorrow I will meditate and do Tai Chi and I might even paint another flower. My comfortable little rut.

Go on have a marvellous day and try something new I just might join you.