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If You Keep It Secret, It Will Be a Flower
Thoughts and pondering before I go to Tokyo
The world feels heavy today, and I sought to lighten the mental load by making the physical load heavier. In other words, today I moved rocks around in my garden.
As I worked, I came back to a conversation I had a few days ago, where I heard a phrase in Japanese: Hisureba hana nari. If you keep it secret, it will be a flower.
I thought of this phrase as I set my foot upon my shovel and dug into the earth. I’m in the process of building a stone path and creating a beautiful space for when the summer comes. I imagine it in my dreams sometimes, what this garden will mean for me. I gather my materials from the forest now — bamboo, soil, and rocks. This process is slow, especially when you only have one wheelbarrow.
If you keep it secret, it will be a flower.
I felt a bit dismayed by this phrase, and I knew exactly why. I didn’t want it mean what I thought it did. You don’t need to say it all. You don’t need to write everything. Some things deserve privacy. A radical concept in the modern age.
As I dug, I discovered some thickened roots of the sasa plant below my feet. Perhaps they thought their secret growth would remain undiscovered this winter. As I cut them away, I wondered…
