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Last year I made a trip across country with my son to take his car to college in Portland, OR. We drove through Kansas sometime near the end of the summer and we saw acres and acres of sunflowers; a most marvelous sight if you’ve never seen it for yourself! I sent a text home to my husband, “I finally know what I want to be when I grow up .... a sunflower farmer!”
This summer I planted sunflowers along the fence-line in our back yard. Within a matter of weeks these little guys went from tiny seeds, hopefully poked into the soil, to these crazy - zany marvelous flowers. They are 10 feet tall, peeking over the fence, waving their paint brushed petals of yellow, orange, and red gleefully in the summer breeze. Every time I step outside they actually make me laugh out loud.
I cut some of the heavier flowers out of the centers of the plants and put them in a vase on my desk at work. Flowers bring me an indescribable energy. Just having them around makes my mind buzz with ideas and hopes and dreams. Today I realized why I love sunflowers so much. They are extreme overachievers - just like me!
• Their faces and leaves are a big as your head,
• They grow 10 feet tall to overshadow all the other plants in the garden,
• Their petals are a marvelous variety of colors that contrast outrageously with the dark centers,
• The centers grow fat and puffy and furry then they reveal hundreds of seeds,
• They never stand still but dance and jiggle and shiver in the breeze day and night.
Overachievement seems good to me when it brings so many delightful attributes to the table. I don’t want to be a person who allows myself to sink to the level of mediocracy acceptable in society today. I don’t want to be an overbearing overachiever who smashes the joy out of everyone they encounter just to meet their goals. I want to be a delightful overachiever who spins beauty in the everyday, who accomplishes things in a big showy happy way that sweeps others along for the ride and leaves a trail of “happily-ever-efter” in her wake, who splashes color on the drab, and waves and jiggles and dances over the fences we all build around ourselves. Lets hear it for sunflowers - hug one today!