The Magical Rose [A Motivational Short Fiction I read Every Year Before Writing My Resolution]

Here is a motivational short fiction that talks about the power of dreaming big. Every time I read it, I get inspired to dream bigger and not to give in. I think it is a good time to share it as it it time for setting up the next year resolution and we all need all the motivation we can get to set higher goals...

Nothing is more heartbreaking that owning a dream which is doomed not by its own definition but by your definition of your existence.

As much as defining your dreams brings them closer to your reach, defining your existence push them out of your reach.

'Defining', by definition, means drawing lines or putting limits around a concept so that it can be expressible by words. A limited dream is smaller than the one that is expanded freely beyond our objective understanding and thus is easier to catch. But when you limit your self-image within borders by defining your existence and your capabilities, you become too small for big dreams or in other words, the used-to-be-small dreams now become too big for you to catch. The neater you define yourself, the smaller your limited self gets, and the smaller your limited self (the idea you have of yourself) gets, the further your dreams get from you or In better words the further you get from your dreams. This is how your dreams turn out of reach and you turn heartbroken just like the beautiful red rose of my story.

Once upon a time, there breathed a beautiful red rose whose glorious beauty was so magical and its reflection on every being's emotion was so extreme that no combinations of words in the real world could ever describe it. So people decided to redefine the magical beauty of the red rose based on its reflection on human imagination and its image in the dream world.

This is how men formed the story of 'The Magical Rose' and why they enthusiastically passed it from one generation to the next.

Billions of children grew up listening to the story of a magical rose that marks the end of the universe and learned dreaming bigger and bigger by hearing how this sparkling red rose whose gigantic leaves are circularly spread like big tender hands to embrace and protect the sun from devils on earth can turn dreams come true. And they grew into adults and surfed through tough times of their adulthood believing that one day the charm of the magical rose would come to their rescue. And then when they were white and old enough to know that the magic was in the fairy tale and not in the magical rose, they sat with their children and grandchildren and relatives reciting the story with a believable tone, sparking eyes, and burning passion to assure listening eyes and ears would realize that The Magical Rose is not just another fairy tale but a true source of miracle.

Hundred years back, in one sparkling full-moon autumn night, an old woman -from a delightfully green parish called Prokhtes- explained that the secret to the magical power of this red rose is not in its beauty but is in its location. "This rose is planted by an injured angel who once landed on earth at a point where dream world collides with the real world. The angel had injured her wings by a burning desire of becoming a human, and so she could not keep flying but she did not wish dying either. The only option she had was to land on earth and wait for her wings to heal. So she puts all her energy together to fly two more centuries to get to the closest doorway that connects the dreamland to the real world (our universe). Some say she managed to get there and land safely. Other myths say one century before she reached the intended door she lost her power and she fell. As she fell, her burning desire melted the wall between reality and dream and so instead of falling into nothingness she fell on our universe. When she landed, she looked around and she noticed how flat everything sounds and how invisible the dreams became to her eyes. So to assure by walking away she would not be lost, she landmarked the entrance of the dream world with a thorn that was sitting just few stones away right in front of her sight. Nobody knows what happened to the angel whether she returned back to her eternity in dream world or if she was granted her wish and turned human and died human. But what my ancestors have passed from generation to generation is that when the angel planted the thorn on the collision point, the thorn dream of becoming the most beautiful rose in the world came true."

Miamadre, the old woman of my story, then gazed up into nowhere somewhere deep in the sky for twenty heart pulses and then she smiled. She then moved her face back towards her involved audiences and continued: "Some myths say because it is the place that is magical, to have your dreams come true, you have to be as close as you can to the rose and touch its petals as they are where the center of entrance to dreamland is placed. But what my ancestors say is that by just staring at the rose and starring your dreams, your dreams will come true. The beauty of the rose is so extreme that it opens up the two wing burrow that connects the eyes to the spirit with tears and admiration and so it lets your true dreams fly. The petals of the magical red rose are so silky and shimmering, that they reflect rays off the dreamland into your eyes. This is how your floating dreams from real world mix up with the rays of dreamland and turn real."

She then paused for a while. As she paused, tears dropped off her eyes. I guess somehow middle down she knew how fake her story was but she also knew how powerful it was. Maybe this is why deep down she strongly believed that the red rose exists. She ended her warm preach with words that were so strong that even turned me, the creator of the story, into a deep believer of the magical power of the red rose.

She said, "When I was a child, everybody in my family believed in it but me. People say children are the best clients for myths but that didn't apply to me as a child. Perhaps that pertains to those children whose dreams are either very reachable (as she said that she looked into my eyes and smiled) or far unreachable that disappointment would not break their heart. With me, it was different. If I had to have a wish, or a so called dream, I would only wish that my kind mother-god bless her spirit and keeps it around me- would be able to walk again but looking at my mother and at her health, seeing how she could not even manage her discharges without my father's help, I was too scared to dream or to wish. But my father -such a great man he was (she sighed or shall I say she exhaled a deep desolation out)-he was so in love that he had no choice but to keep on dreaming and believing. He carried my mother on foot tens of thousands of miles to reach the red rose. They crossed Avrio, and Metavrio lands, and even traversed Perisotero oceans to join the Ekhtes mountains behind which there is an isolated land called Tora. Tora is the home to the magical rose. My Father said Tora land was deserted and dry, but the reflection of the rays were so strong that Tora looked all burnished and bright. 'When you enter it you just want to dance and dance and fly'. Mother said, when they approached the magical rose, her beauty was so glorious that made her forget about her identity. Mother said as they entered Tora they suddenly forgot about their pains, their troubles, their dreams, their lives, and their love. At that magical moment, every cells of their mind got preoccupied by the inexpressible beauty of the rose and its magical reflection of azure and silver lights. It was as if the rose was using her charm on mother to drag her towards herself like a stupendous magnet whilst it was using her oversized glory on father to freeze him into an open mouth statue that could do nothing but watch and praise the rose's beauty. Mother wanted to move forward but father could not move his legs so she had to use her own. This is how mother started to walk for the first time since I was born. I couldn't thank the red rose enough after I saw mother walking towards me in full health. Because if she couldn't walk again, I wouldn't be able to forgive myself for forcing myself into this world before my time arrives. Mother's paralysis was the result of difficult birth. I was as much of a hard headed baby then as I am a chatty old woman now."

She beamed.

Mother of our Miamadre was not the only one whose wish was granted by the Magical Rose. Millions of people over centuries were so mesmerized by their belief in the power of the red rose that when they encountered the red rose their soul freed itself from boundaries and perceptions and reached out to their dreams.

Little did anyone knew that the magical rose whose existence was the answer to everyone's dream was in much grief as her so called magical existence had seemingly turned her own dream into an unreachable white blinking dot on the sky.

And little did the little red rose knew how her assumed unnoticeable existence which she detested with every blood cell she did not own and grieved over with every shed tear she never possessed was that very mysterious source of happiness and exhilaration that billions of people were thankful for.

Once up on a time, there breathed a little rose who when she opened her blossom she fell in love with the very first thing she laid her eyes on, the sun! As she learnt to love, she dared to dream and hence the in-love rose dreamt of traveling the seven seas and the seven skies in search of a roadway to the sun just so that she could once warmly cuddle the burning sun and let her know she is not alone. Cute little rose! She assumed sun is burning out of despair and loneliness.

Since this dream was born out of her heart-that is the queen of one's existence- it covered all her mind -that is the center of one's existence- and so she had no choice but to follow her dream.

How glorious it is to have the heart to dream and the determination to follow. But is its glory as significant as the agony of keeping an unreachable dream close to the heart because you fear if you let go your soul would cease to breathe?

When the little rose's existence was enjoining her to follow footsteps of her dream, her existence was also impeding her from her dream. Just as she decided to move, she realized she is just a plant, a rose who was not born to move but to stay in one point and pivot. She realized the only magic that can turn her dream come true is the magic that has the power to turn her into something other than a rose, a creature that can move, a creature that is no longer her, and so she felt doomed.

What an agony to know that your existence is way smaller than your dreams to the extent that your beloved dream, the artwork of your heart, mocks at your nothingness compared to his gigantic presence and forces you to kneel in front of his authority and praise him with all the cells in your body and curse yourself with all the oxygen in your heart.

When the dream is this big you have two choices, you can either choose to forget your existence and identify yourself as 'the owner of that big dream', or you can let go of the dream so that you can feel good about your presence and the size of your existence. But when that gigantic dream is what keeps your soul breathing, you only have one choice and that is to let the dream cover your identity.

And so the rose of my story started and continued to weep and shed tears of blood into her petals out of agony of being nothing more than a rose who could never walk to the sun until tears wiped out her memory and her perception about time, space, and her limited life. She was thus so detached from her identified existence and attached to her unreachable dream that when all roses of her age and plants around her neighborhood died in their battlefield against time and bad weather, she just survived as she could not sense the time nor the weather. She was too anesthetized by the idea of her nothingness that she had no chance to worry about the effect of time on her beauty and the influence of the weather and the water on her survival. Her soul just kept weeping and bleeding in company of her deep dream to the extent that her petals were all filled with bloods that were as pure as her dream.

Meanwhile, her deep thirst for achievement strongly nourished her leaves and her stem to the extent that they grew into a circle of silky shrub around her face. Within just a century, the leaves were so mystically grown around her existence that it seemed as if the red rose owned tens of big tender hands which were all obliquely pointed towards the sky in a clouded day to protect the universe from a heavy storm or towards the sun in a summer noon-when sun comes completely out of hiding-to cuddle and protect the sun from devils on earth, or towards the moon on a full-moon night-when the moon unshyingly shows off and shines - to dance with the moon alongst the stars.

While everyone started to describe her as a magical red rose whose leaves are so magically spread like big tender hands around her stem that it looks as if she is cuddling the sun and whose petals make dreams come true, the little red rose continued to cry blood and blame her limited existence for her doomed destiny.