Waking up slowly in a sea of flowers

All the blooming flowers have frozen... "Flower Sea" Performed by: Gong Linna, Meyre Maya You see, those disciplined feelings of "not worthy" and "not daring" are cocoons in our hearts. When I first watched the "Ride the Wind 2023" performance of "Flower Sea" by Gong Linna and Meyre Maya, I silently thought this to myself. Gong Linna, draped in a pink gauze dress like a late-blooming cherry blossom, broke free from the shackles of half a lifetime. She once viewed pink as "a color that didn't belong to her" due to appearance anxiety, yet in "Flower Sea," she achieved self-liberation in a pink dress. Center stage, when Gong Linna sang "don't leave me," her high notes cut through the air like a blade, flower petals fell like snow, and pink waves enveloped both singers. Gong Linna was like a butterfly breaking free from its cocoon, fluttering amidst the scattered powder. In the morning mist of Erhai Lake in Dali, I stepped through clusters of Cosmos bipinnatus to reach the rooftop garden of Tinghua Tang Seaside Flower Garden Inn, and was reminded of the song "Flower Sea." Everything here The little house built of stone and wood The boundary where sky meets Erhai Lake The sky mirror suspended on the top floor A cup of hot tea I suddenly realized that this might be a life experiment about "feeling worthy"—questioning the choices about lifestyles we "deserve" and "dare to live"... In the second-floor sky garden, girls in cream-colored dresses ran toward the infinity pool, their laughter resonating with wind chimes. Flowers, shrubs, and trees, both familiar and unfamiliar, grow under the gardener's care. The tower-shaped blooms of white fox tail bougainvillea trembled in the twilight. They say its flowering period extends from late spring to winter. In Dali's consistently warm climate, it can bloom year-round, while the narcissus lilies in terracotta pots won't bloom until April when it's truly warm, and then only for a brief two weeks. This reminds me of those things we deliberately postpone to "someday"—waiting for a promotion to take a vacation, waiting to lose weight to wear a white dress, waiting for an anniversary to give gifts, waiting to be loved to believe that there can be lovers and beloved ones in this world, and so on. At this moment, I'm lying on a rattan chair by the pool's rest area. Country music flows from the Bluetooth speaker, and the fragrance of narcissus and citrus leaves mingles with the sea breeze entering my nostrils. Looking up, there's a lemon right above my head. You deserve to properly settle yourself, day and night. Allow yourself to enjoy your own life, just as flowers and leaves have the right to enjoy the moisture in the air and the sunlight—without conditions, without weighing options. Where do all these "someday" and "worthy or not worthy" thoughts come from? Look, when the sunset comes, it doesn't ask anyone and doesn't feel it shouldn't come. Neither does the dawn, the wind, the rain, the moon, or the sunshine. As Tang Tian wrote in "Distant Flowers," the ending song of "The Story of Roses": "Roads can be for running, or for dancing; happiness should be self-sufficient, needing no one by your side."