You will have many setbacks in life, but if you are patient, persistent, and consistent, you can recover from any of them.
Consider the story of a beautiful houseplant arrangement that my parents sent us in July 2016, shortly after we moved into our first house.
Over time, most of the plants in the arrangement had various mishaps they couldn’t recover from. A lone anthurium, or “flamingo flower” remained, that we planted separately.
Shortly thereafter, it suffered a vicious, unprovoked attack from our cat 😊 which almost killed it, and left it with no more flowers.
Then, we put it outside for some summer sun. This ended up burning the leaves, which nearly killed it again. We soon realized it was not the type of plant that enjoyed any amount of direct sunlight.
I brought it back inside again, and put it on a high shelf in my office, far away from the cat’s reach. It slowly grew a few new leaves and was on its way to recovery.
Unfortunately the shelf was not up to the task of holding this heavy planter. One day it fell about 6 ft, scattering soil and plant everywhere, nearly killing the flamingo flower yet again.
I carefully picked it all up, got some new soil, and replanted the poor flower, which now only consisted of a few small leaves. I reattached the shelf more securely.
It was winter, so it wasn’t getting much light, so I purchased a timed grow light on amazon, and set a recurring reminder to make sure I didn’t forget to water it.
Slowly, bit by bit, a new leaf would unfurl. With the consistent light and watering, the plant began to recover.
About a month ago, a tiny red bud appeared, and just a few days ago, it began unfurling into a beautiful red flower, the first flower since we received the arrangement in 2016.
This lesson can be applied to any aspect of life: Career, health, relationships, hobbies.
You will always have setbacks, but if you keep nurturing something persistently and consistently, you will always be rewarded.