What If This Life Never Blooms Brilliantly?

This morning, I stepped into the temple garden and looked at the tulips and hyacinths slowly losing the last of their fragile petals. Spring in Europe passes by so quickly. The cherry blossoms had barely appeared before they began changing colour. The pear blossoms beside the stream lasted only a few days before nothing remained except their flower stems. Perhaps joys in life are like that too, making us feel that they disappear so quickly.

With a sense of sadness, I gathered the remaining flowers to offer to the Buddha. Then I quietly felt sorry for the blossoms before me and thought:

“However magnificent they are, they only shine for a moment before fading and withering.”

Then I suddenly realized how foolish I was. What flower does not eventually fade? Even artificial flowers will grow old one day, and sometimes before they even become old, people become tired of them and throw them away, replacing them with different colours and styles.

In this world, what truly lasts forever?

I suddenly remembered a question from a young person that has recently become popular online:

“What if my whole life is never brilliant?”

If someone asked me that question, I would take them to the flower garden in front of the temple and say:

“Who has the right to decide that you are not brilliant? Why can’t you shine in your own way?”

In the temple garden, there are all kinds of flowers. Even tulips alone come in countless colours and forms. They stand beside daffodils displaying their beauty, while peony branches stretch out with new buds, and roses quietly hold their tiny unopened blossoms at the tips of their stems. I cannot answer which colour is the most beautiful or which flower shines the brightest, because to me, even the unnamed little white flowers of some wild grass growing beside the temple’s flower beds have their own beauty. They are also spreading their fragrance and adding beauty to life in their own way.

Look at the grass field in the distance. Do you see? Those grasses do not have flowers. They simply remain a fresh green colour all year round, yet they have fulfilled their purpose: they become the background that allows the dandelions to appear radiant. If dandelions grew alone on a pathway, they would seem ordinary. It is because they live among the green fields that people can truly see their beauty. Those unnamed grasses would suffer deeply, wouldn’t they, if they believed:

“My whole life is only to serve as a background for others.”

But do you know? When winter arrives, those very grasses remain beneath the freezing cold. They may be small, but they stand proudly alongside the pine and evergreen trees, helping the world preserve a shade of green. They may be nameless, but they are not meaningless. They have value and purpose in life. They are truly living, not merely existing.

Recently, I read a touching story about a young man named Ngô Anh Quân, a former athlete from Hanoi who gave up his dream of becoming a martial arts competitor to care for his mother after she suffered a stroke. His story and his smile touched the hearts of many people. He once shared:

“Life inevitably brings moments when we have to stop and choose something else that is more important. The feeling of regret cannot compare with the feeling that my mother needs me.”

I believe Quân has truly “shone brightly” in this harsh world. I see his smile as more beautiful than many smiles of models, actors, or famous celebrities, because that smile is the result of a long process of building character. Everyone carries pressure. Everyone experiences exhaustion. But Quân shared:

“There are days when I feel tired and irritated, when it seems like the world slows down. But I learned to control my emotions, make things gentler, and smile more, so that my mother can feel my positive energy every day. If we truly want something, we find a way; if we do not want it, we find excuses. My mother’s teaching has become my guiding principle at this moment.”

True love that comes from the heart allows people to find happiness, no matter how difficult their circumstances may be.

I know that perhaps right now you are very tired, buried under the deadlines your new boss has given you. But do you know that outside there are many people still carrying their resumes everywhere, searching for work, yet unable to find a place that accepts them?

You may be someone who worries because you graduated months ago but still have not found a job. But many people wish they could continue their unfinished education for reasons beyond their control.

You may be someone without qualifications or connections, coming from a poor family in a distant countryside, struggling every day just to earn a living. Do you know that many people right now wish they had your legs, so they could walk anywhere they wanted; your hands, so they could do the things they love without depending on anyone; your eyes, so they could see the blue sky and white clouds. But their wishes may never become reality.

If you are currently drowning in darkness because life did not give you the gift of sight, if you must sit in a wheelchair inside a lonely home, if you are struggling every day with a serious illness, do you know that at this very moment, in countless hospitals around the world, patients and doctors are fighting together to reclaim every breath, every blink, every heartbeat? Because life itself is an extraordinary miracle.

I suddenly remembered the flowers in the garden. On my first day here, I saw no leaves or flowers at all. The freezing temperatures below zero had left the branches bare. I was told that the leaves had already turned yellow and fallen since the end of autumn. The ground was empty, covered only with stones and thick layers of snow during winter. Yet, beneath those harsh conditions, young shoots and flower buds were quietly forming and waiting. At the end of winter and the beginning of spring, from flower bulbs sleeping deep beneath the soil, snowdrops and lilies began to push through, stretching themselves toward the sunlight and blooming the first small, delicate petals. Tulips and hyacinths followed, bringing gentle fragrances that made the air feel warmer and softer. When the pear trees, apple trees, and cherry trees became covered with blossoms, roses and peonies only then began to form their buds, decorating life with the most brilliant and magnificent colours. They take turns: blooming, fading, and together providing hardworking bees with a new season of nectar.

Human life is sometimes the same. Sometimes we need difficulties, obstacles, struggles, and hardship before we can reach success. Success that comes from a long process of nurturing, improving ourselves, and growing each day becomes far more valuable than achievements that arrive too quickly. Those quick achievements may only be temporary, shallow, and without true meaning.

I want to offer you these two lines of poetry from Zen Master Hoang Ba Hi Van:

“If the frost had never once touched the cold,
How could the plum blossom release its fragrance?”

So, if you have not yet become as brilliant as you wish to be, continue to nurture yourself. It is not because you are incapable. It is because you are simply in a period of “winter sleep”, quietly waiting for the right time to bloom.

I want to tell you that you have the right to choose how you live. Are you like a candle safely kept inside a storage room, or are you like the candle shining on the altar that I am lighting as an offering to the Three Jewels? Some people choose to remain still, waiting for luck, waiting for miracles, waiting for days to pass meaninglessly. Like a candle that has never once burned. Like leftover pieces of candle wax without a wick, melted down and poured into a new mould. Others give their full effort to learning, working, contributing, nurturing themselves, and growing every day so they can shine. Because they believe:

“It is better to shine brightly once and then disappear, than to flicker weakly for a hundred years.”

However, you have another choice. You can choose to be a candle, or you can choose to be a flower. A candle burns once and then its life ends. A flower may wither, but when it falls, its roots remain. The flower bulb still rests in the soil, holding onto the earth. The blooming and fading of a flower is only a temporary expression of life. The bulb hidden beneath the ground will produce beautiful flowers again the following year and create new bulbs, allowing even more flowers to bloom. Life continues through this process of growth and renewal, with one generation extending into the next. Therefore, whatever contains true core values and depends on lasting foundations is what can endure. Sometimes we bloom brilliantly. Sometimes we fade and become quiet. But when our deeper values remain, the flower is only resting temporarily, waiting for the right conditions and the right moment to bloom again. When people choose to build their lives on lasting values such as morality, wisdom, compassion, service, kindness, patience, determination, and continuous effort, then success or failure becomes less important. What matters is what we have preserved within our hearts.

The sunlight has arrived. I must bring the flowers to offer to the Buddha. May the mind always remain peaceful and calm, whether or not we are shining brightly in this life.

Tâm Biện