THE TINY SEED & THE FLOWERPOT: A METAPHOR

I put a little seed in some unlikely-looking soil, tightly packed inside a beautiful flowerpot. Grow, tiny seed, grow, I said hopefully as it fell.

I'm not confident that it will.

I like to think that that little seed will get all the sunshine and rain that it needs - that it's buried deep down there in the darkness, waiting for some chemistry to kick in. That's how these things begin - chemistry: a tiny spark of life in the darkest of places.

This feels like the darkest of places, the waiting. Perhaps one day soon, it will burst into the open, shoot out into the sun and explode with hope and thankfulness. I watch the flowerpot for the smallest of signs. There are none. Watch and wait, watch and wait, watch and wait.

Tiny seeds can become the tallest of trees. Perhaps one day, this little seed, sown into unlikely soil, resting in the cool darkness of the earth, will somehow be enough to tower over me in the dappled sunlight of a summer's day, to cover me from the winter snow and delight me with the colours of Autumn.

Or perhaps it will just remain a tiny seed, forlorn and hopeless in the beautiful flowerpot. Time will tell, I think to myself, in this darkest of places. Time will tell.