The flower truck

© Jan Wayne Fields

It was parked in a different neighbourhood each week. Its flowers were so fresh, their aroma oozed right into the windows of the nearest houses.

The middle-aged woman who ran this ‘business’ narrated how it all began from a single flower cut by her partner on one of their daily afternoon walks. “It was seemingly insignificant, but to me it meant the world”, she recounted as her cheeks blushed. “From then on, he would constantly bring me flowers, regardless of how small, they would always make me smile”.

“So I started this truck. Hoping to make other people happy too”.

Also part of Friday Fictioneers

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The unbearable lightness of unfairness

“In every life we have some trouble, when you worry you make it double,” sang Bob Marley (originally sung by Bobby McFerrin), prompting us to “don’t worry, be happy”.  We hear it a thousand times from a million different places: we need to stop stressing over everything so much and enjoy life as it is. But what is most difficult to grasp is the way to quickly overcome adversities. Especially when they point out every so often how unfair life is.

With the advancement of social media to the extent when at every second during the day anyone can flaunt where they are and what they’re (not) doing, this feeling is enhanced to the utmost. Especially when you see people going on trips around the world supposedly for business or some other professional “duty”, yet are acting as if they have grasped the opportunity to enhance their tourism skills on company expenses. And there are many examples. We see them everyday. From our “representative” politicians to TV personas, actors, right down to friends and colleagues.

So what do you do in such cases? When the reality of injustice smacks you in the face? Well, most people just prompt you to live out your misery for a while; let it take you over and then quietly let it fade away as you realise how much you’ve accomplished in your life and how much more you can do. They will all repeat to you that “no-one said life would be easy (or fair); they just promised it would be worth it”. So just let it be, pick up your pieces and move on. Things will turn around and you’ll get what you need eventually. What matters most is that you don’t give up.

“People are always complaining that life’s not fair, but that simply isn’t true. Life is extraordinarily fair. It’s just not centred on you” – Lynn Marie Sager

Business is not pleasure

In all our lives we seem to struggle to find something that we love to do. That we enjoy investing our time and energy in. And that will reward us for it. Something that suits us and pleases us both metaphorically and literally, as it is common knowledge that satisfaction alone cannot pay the bills.

Yet it is very few people who have managed to make a living out of their hobby. Feeling passionate about what you do is one thing. But basing your entire earnings on it is a whole different story.

When you enter the business side of negotiations, you realize that no matter how much you love what you do, it all becomes so commercialized and trivial. It is complicated trying to get a revenue out of what you so far have only seen as a delightful hobby.

You never truly realize what you’re in for, until you’re ankle deep. But when you’re already in the middle of the ocean, you have to swim. No matter the sharks that surround you.

The business transactions involved in making a living out of your dreams often drowns out the fun of what you do, but it all depends on who you work with.

The arduous nature of it all – the bureaucracy, the scamming, the deals – is that in the end you might dislike the very thing that got your heart racing in the first place.

You’ll get excited, thrilled, confused, upset, angry, irritated.

And in the end you’ll just realize you’ve spend an incredible amount of time thinking about inconsiderate people that weren’t even worth it.

There is a reason why the saying goes “don’t mix business with pleasure”.

Doing what you love doesn’t always mean you’ll get a financial reward from it.

So the most you can do, is try to enjoy what you do.

And then have enough time to dedicate to your true passion.

Who knows, maybe one day the right opportunity will come along at the right time, with the right people and the right circumstances to make a living out of it too.