When I lived in Hawaii, I would occasionally walk into my office in downtown Honolulu and be instantly intoxicated. Those days, a strong sweet, heady fragrance would fill my office because someone had dropped off pikake.
Pikake are generous white flowers, one of the many used in fragrant Hawaiian leis. Folks knew that I loved the smell and would randomly drop off loose flowers on my desk. The spirit of aloha & flowers together etched a sweet memory of a quintessential Hawaiian experience.
Recently, as the summer approached Houston, I thought about that aromatic flower. As such, last week I began the rigorous search online for these unique Hawaiian flowers.
Page after page, every website I encountered offered substandard plants not worthy of being ordered (as per countless reviews). My frustration started to rise in thinking why isn’t it available? Was it really that unique? Would I have to ask a friend in Hawaii to ship seeds? Why is this so hard?
Finally, I settled on one website with mediocre reviews and thought perhaps I could take a chance on them. After all, what choice did I have? Even then, I could not commit to ordering and then decided simply to let it go.
The next morning, as I leisured over a cup of coffee, an epiphany hit me. I remembered a local nursery. Would they carry this plant? Doubtful, given its exotic nature. But still, something prompted me to call them at 8 in the morning.
Fifteen minutes later, I walked into the garden. There, these beautiful 3 foot tall, fully established shrubs, aka the Maid of New Orleans, aka the Duke of Tuscany, aka Arabian Jasmine, aka mogra, aka pikake, stood tall. As I reached down to smell the delicate white flower, I was instantly back in Hawaii, sitting in my office, drunk from the perfumed scent of these incredible flowers.
Frustration – You Spin Me Right Round
I realized that in all my searching and thinking, it was only when I let go… and thereby opened up some empty space, the epiphany found me. What I searched high and low for online (over days) was always right around the corner from my house. No free shipping required!
Frustration is a spiral. We can spin in it indefinitely until we decide to get out of it. Remember that a question and an answer (to a problem) do not exist on the same plane. You have to step out of the problem and then allow some space for ideas to come to you that can offer a solution. If we can do that, in a mere few minutes, we can open ourselves to creatively find answers that may have eluded us for the hours we spent “working” on a problem.
I realize that looking for a flower is not the same as everyday life and work frustrations… but the prescription for the condition of “frustration,” is the same. We have to give ourselves permission to release. Pulling back from frustration isn’t giving up. It’s understanding that life has a way of figuring things out when you can actually let go. Relax. Trust.
Allow ideas to come to you vs. always thinking that they need to be created by you. The more you can do that, the more you can glide through life effortlessly.