Cactus blooms

Hey there,

I'm a bit late posting this photo, since this was taken sometime after Christmas. If I remember correctly, this plant is called "Christmas Cactus" in Finland. It's a plant that is given as a gift during the holiday season.

I got this one from a friend several years ago and - miraculously - it's still alive and blooming! I sooooo don't have a green thumb: I usually manage to kill off all flora within a 100 yard/meter radius in a very short time. Fauna prosper better - the last cat I had, Tina, lived to be 19 years old. And she did not die but had to be euthanized due to illness. I'll tell her story another time.

I had been planning on replacing the soil of all my plants (a whopping total of two!) for several years and this year I finally got around to it. And here's the result: cactus in full bloom. And pink, as is appropriate.

The moral of this story? Take good care of your assets.

I learned this from the books by Dr. Lois Frankl. She has written books such as Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office and Nice Girls Don't Get Rich. These books don't advocate that you shouldn't be nice - they advoate that you should stop being a girl and start being a woman! Don't worry about "being nice" all the time (men don't).

Dr. Frankl reminds us that in addition to taking good care of our financial assets, we also need to take care of material assets, i.e. all our belongings. This means getting clothes and shoes repaired, taking good care of jewelry (e.g. pearls) etc.

Coincidentally, Dr. Lois Frankl is descended from Dr. Viktor Frankl, developer of existential psychology and a holocaust survivor. Incredibly, he discovered the meaning of life while in a Nazi concentration camp. He writes about his experiences in Man's Search for Meaning - a truly incredible book.

He found that in a concentration camp, the ones who survived were not the ones who stole food from others - they were the ones who shared their tiny, moldy piece of bread with those who had none. It is not calories that keep us alive - it is our will to live. In order to have a will to live, our lives need to have meaning - a meaning that each one of us must discover for her/himself. We need to find the desert blooms in a forest of cacti.

The Lady with the Pink Thumb