The Veteran's Flower

You may know bout the tradition to hand out poppy flowers on Veterans Day. The story goes that on the bloody Belgian battle fields in the aftermath of World War I, poppy plants appeared, with the dark red color symbolizing the blood-shed, absorbed and recycled by Mother Earth.

Well, I used to feel like a soldier in my job as a financial strategist. Longing for the spiritual freedom of expression instead, I felt that I had stayed there just to pay the bills, and minded my lack of imagination to make it professionally as a spiritual coach and a writer. But then it occurred to me that my next career was still more an avocation than anything else, and that a handsome side-effect of my current job, I do hang out with people I like. There is also subconscious baggage my current job helps me throw over-board such as the desire for financial independence. Embarrassingly, there is also the desire to impress and I rather do that in a professional setting where this drive is out in the open rather than being subconsciously driven to become a fake guru.
So I leave it up to a higher authority to tell me when to move on to something bigger and brighter, and until then, I am happy to collect Veteran's poppy flowers every November.

2020 will be it for me if I don't receive the signal to exit from my current job pre-maturely. It can't get any better than having perfect vision, right? It would be 25 years with the same company. In numerology 25 adds to the number 7, a symbol for completion. I will be 55, still young enough in today's day and age to start it over again in a new field. I also would have picked up my 5th consecutive Veterans flower given that I started collecting my achievement trophies only after my 50th birthday as shown in the picture. Either way is fine with me. Let HER show me the WAY. Meanwhile I am happy to do my professional work in the day, and develop my avocation during my spare time; that is, working on my daily blog, writing my books, participating in spiritual communities and counseling the next generation. As much as I love the poppy images, I have upgraded myself from being a soldier to being a light-worker. Whatever I do and wherever I am, I work with HER and I am in it simply for the fun of it.