Stickers are beautiful.

"For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name."
Luke 1:49; Mike Crawford and the Secret Siblings

Leaps and bounds, every morning I coax myself out of bed and head towards the kitchen for tea. I have mastered what I call "the leap" since there is one spot right by the front door that I must pass on my trek; it is where all stickers that our shoes so naively attract gather. If I have any desire to avoid a morning jolt of prickly pain, I crouch slightly, grip the couch and launch my body over the treacherous terrain.

Yet there are times that no matter how skilled I am at leaping, I still manage to secure a nice prick in the soft skin of my foot.

Today I was walking to my yoga class in sandals, treading cautiously and giving all sticker patches as wide a birth as possible. With my concentration so heavily on the ground, I was surprised by a spontaneous appreciation for the beauty of a plant that could be so annoying. I observed the unintentional patterns of the burrs and their flow with each other.

Stickers are Beautiful, Patience is not. It would be much less of an effort for me to just walk through that death trap and take the consequences of pain as it comes. So what happens when I quit jumping and I go one day, two days, and three without even a tiny prick? This just reinforces laziness and a desire for what I want.

Patience means i'm cautious, it means I leap over the apparent beauty to make it to something much more satisfying.