If you’ve ever seen a time lapse video of plant growth you likely marveled at the beauty and wisdom of life. The flow of life vivifies what would otherwise be an uncoordinated conglomeration of matter and energy.

Life surges through the members of the animal and vegetable kingdoms it animates, including mankind, though man, with his capacity for free will, can modulate the expression of the life which pours through his form more than any other animal. Every man, woman, and child allows, through his or her pattern of choice, for the outpouring of life within. Some choices amplify the flow, while others attenuate it.

The creative process is by nature incredibly forgiving. The physical world is constantly in flux. Life, which is by nature eternal, is constantly inspiriting new forms in new ways. Old forms give way to new ones, but life itself never dies. The death of a loved one is not the death of life, but the sundering of life and the form it quickens. There is loss, but it is not total.

Every new thing you undertake moves through a life cycle. Impregnation, gestation, birth, and maturation work out through every aspect of your life. This order is the law of life. It manifests in a pattern and the pattern is immutable. That, however, doesn’t stop people from trying to work around it. They lean into it with the force of their will, pitting cleverness against wisdom in an effort to speed things up or to bypass the laws of nature. While such attempts may appear to work in the short term, they are eventually swept away by the pliant, yet unchangeable laws of life.

At any given point in time you will find yourself in the midst of any number of cycles which are at various stages of unfoldment. Time management, project management, life and leadership skills, and so many other clever classifications are simply fancy ways to describe the process by which these cycles of life are managed. Some advocate the use of force more than others, all demand a certain level of understanding of the principles of organization, but ultimately we are all students in the great school of life.

Your dominion over the world you center is as dependent upon the timing of your action as it is the quality of your action. Pushing and demanding results, insisting that the form be a certain way prematurely will distort the outcome and possibly abort the unfolding cycle. Likewise, waiting too long to act, procrastinating beyond the point of no return, or constantly wishing things were different than they are now will likely result in a string of missed opportunities.

Life is wise. Life is beautiful. Coordinate with it and you will flourish and blossom. Struggle against it and you will wither and eventually find yourself unable to accommodate its vibrancy. In this sense the old adage is correct: if you stop and get a whiff of the flowers, you might just begin living more generously, more radiantly. And like the time lapse films, it may work in and through you faster than you might have thought possible.