Nyctinasty

I have a thing for poppies. Well, flowers in general.  But I’ve always been drawn to the poppy, my initial foray into gardening. I would buy the seed packet and attempt to grow them, envisioning a field full of their beautiful paper-thin petals in screaming scarlet dotting my yard.  They’ve proven difficult to propagate, even though I now have years of experience with plants under my belt.  But I persist because they are so alluring. 

The forked blue-green foliage hides in my garden, looking deceivingly forbidding, like that of a weed with the ability to inflict pain, however, if you touch them there is a sultry, silky smooth quality incongruent with what the eye sees. Once the flaming blooms burst out of their fat buds, I know to make no mistake, they’ve arrived, as if they’re saying, I’m here, take notice!

So when I ran across the poem “Early Nightfall” in my quest for more detail about poppies, I was immediately enamored with this line which speaks to my belief that the first step to realizing our dreams is to announce them to the world in all their glory: 

“The poppy opes her scarlet purse of dreams.”

I was eager to digest the full meaning of the poem. As I dove in to understand the composition, I found a puzzling pattern of word choice. “Opes”, in fact was not a spelling error, nor is it in the dictionary. Does the poet get artistic license to make up his own words?

I wanted to love the whole poem.  In unraveling its meaning, unsavory information about the author came to light.  I started looking at other poets like Sandburg and Yeats.  Surely they’ve written something masterful about poppies, and they’re considered better writers and well-respected.  But their words didn’t grab me in the same way. It made me pause to consider, was the line of the poem no longer worth using because its author was deemed marginally talented and lacking integrity? 

Do we have the right to discount something entirely because a portion of it is flawed?

It feels in some ways like we have become a society that hunts down and devours imperfection. The way political campaigns are run, there isn’t a person alive perfect enough to be President.  And who has the stomach to undergo such scrutiny, especially, when it is inevitable that something will be uncovered. We’re human.  Yet we’re constantly told our teeth aren’t white enough, our skin isn’t smooth enough. And that lapse in judgment you made when you were 19, that’s going to be a problem for the rest of your life.

We all live in glass houses.  How is it that there is so much stone throwing going on? 

What worries me is that this assumption that we all need to be perfect holds us back from pursuing our dreams. It’s enough to make us close up and keep our aspirations to ourselves. I was a panelist at a women’s leadership training session today.  We spent a lot of time talking about how women hold themselves back, shying away from requesting promotions and taking on stretch assignments until they are skilled in every required area, almost to the point of over-qualification. It seems the threat of an attack on our competencies makes us hold back when we should be leaping at the next new challenge.

The advice from every woman on the panel was to find the courage to take a risk.  Don’t worry that you don’t know it all. Practice articulating your dreams because the first step to becoming CEO is to actually speak your goal out loud. Ask for a stretch assignment to test your muscle.  Find a mentor to help you navigate.  See the big picture, but don’t solve for the problem that may be five steps down the road, solve for the one right in front of you.  Mistakes will be made.  It’s not the end of the world.

Most importantly, in a time where everything and everyone is scrutinized for weaknesses and faults we need to look for the good. Someone’s going to find our flaws, that’s a given.  We can run from it or we can proudly turn our scarlet purses to the sun, with all of our imperfections, open them up to the world and reveal our dreams.