A novel kind of propagation

It starts with a seed – just a small idea. Sometimes we harvest the seed from someone else. Sometimes it drifts in like a dandelion clock. Sometimes it sticks like a bur and won’t let go.

We plant it in the fertile soil of our minds, water it with daydreams, let it sit for a while in darkness, waiting for the moment when it erupts.

Then we tend it. At first we keep it hidden, like a secret. The shoot is too tender to bring it out into the open to be battered by criticism, frozen by self-doubt, cut down before it takes hold.

It grows stronger and we replant it, transferring it from page to screen, bringing it out into the air. Perhaps we show it to our trusted friends. They nod and smile and tell us that this thing has roots not legs, that this thing can grow.

We try to tame it, hoping it will do our bidding but it has its own ideas. It wants to be free. It throws out fresh shoots in new directions, spreading and sprouting until it has quite taken over our lives.

We snip it and prune it, kill the darling buds of May. We extract its seeds and store them in the darkness for a future date.

We pour sunshine onto it, talk to it, live with it. We tend to it day after day until it stands fully grown and blooming, like a child that we have nurtured now fulfilling their own destiny. We stand back and admire its glory.