Well, thank heck that’s over!
As January the 933rd finally clicks into February 1st, we can all breath a sigh of relief.
At Bootcamp HQ, that really was what the weather forecasters describe as “the harshest on record for quite some time”. It’s a funny old month, January. It starts out with such promise – boom, crash, flash, hurrah etc. New Year, New Me, this is the one, 2019 will be mine etc.
Yet before you know it, you realise it’s January 10th and after all, you are still you, dealing with the world in the way you do. So, allow me a digression into metaphor if you will. Roses steal the spotlight in the ultra-competitive flower world.
Internationally recognised as the symbol of all things romantic and pretty.
My favourite flower is a tulip – simple, no fuss, beautiful. Give me a bunch of tulips and I’m yours for life. But the true hero of the flower world is the snowdrop.
Why?
The snowdrop is hope, against all the odds. Every year, snowdrops commit to fighting their way into life, through the frozen iron ground, into a world that isn’t ready for flowers yet. It lacks the rose’s defensive thorns and the tulips sense of timing. Instead, nakedly defenceless it pops up and shares a modest loveliness with an environment which is still, to all intents and purposes, trying to kill it. By the time the other plants follow its lead, it’s exhausted with simply existing and retreats underground until some latent ancient instinct sends it pioneering into the world again.
So now we are in February, and the snowdrops are out.
It’s tempting, like the rose, to await the warmth of summer, and bask, safely protected by thorns; to be the tulip, timely and simple and lovely. But spring is coming anyway soon, and as I’ve blogged about previously, the Celtman beckons, so I will be trying to take inspiration from the snowdrops.
It’s not about waiting for the time to be right. It’s about growing and being alive as best we can, even in the harshest conditions. The gym is cold and there are no biscuits there.
But it’s a great place to be alive with your friends.
See you all there!
Richard
