Thorn Of A Rose 

No matter how magnificent, each rose bears thorns, for a rose without thorns is not a true rose, but a synthetic rose that will bear nothing everlasting. Love is something that everyone knows about, and yet only a select few can experience it for themselves. They find a rose and embrace its thorns because they can see exactly how beautiful the rose truly is. Many will find roses that bear no thorns, they bask in all its beauty, and then move on to another with no consequences. That is lust, not love. They can not contrast the beauty and pain. It is not balanced between elegance and suffering. Love is the most complex emotion we can comprehend. You will see fragments of love around you, nearly daily, but in cases of true love the most important things are hidden, unable to be noticed by our naked eye. No one person can ever have a complete picture of true love because that definition is malleable to the people searching for it. 

True love can not be researched, it can not be studied, it can not be artificial, it can only be what it is…a rose. When you find an elegant rose and in your ignorance you find yourself pricked by a thorn, do you discard the rose because you see it unfit for your presence? Do you instead go to the store to find a rose that was forced to have no thorns because it would be easier to bask in its beauty? No, because if your love is true you will embrace the thorns. The thorns are as necessary to the rose as its exquisite beauty. Love brings forth happiness and joy, but it carries with it suffering, and sadness. Most only wish for the positives of love, but that is not love. They seek lust. If you want to be joyful, you must take the risk of being miserable. To have only good would be impossible because to know good, you must also have bad. Otherwise, you would live in a world of gray, nothing being everything. True love is something built from hope, passion, and an immortal feeling, unable to be destroyed. A person in love will hold a rose by its thorns until their hand is drenched in the same red the flower itself bears. 

Everything has an opposite that comes with it. Every act has a consequence, and love is no outlier. With love comes loss. When the rose’s final petal falls and it is no longer of this world whether by the cruelty of disease or by one side’s love fading, you are broken, lost, and cursed to ever wander this abysmal planet without your love by your side. Sure you may find other roses but to you, they will never live up to your true love. To most that would be a fate worse than death, a life of torture. Most people don’t have the strength to carry on, they instead choose to follow their rose into the garden. For those people, we pray that they have a garden to return to, a garden where they can be reunited with that love which captivated them so much.

There was once a man. He found his rose. It was more exquisite and valuable than any words could convey. This rose has its thorns. It had many thorns, but it was the most beautiful ever grown. This rose snuck up on him without his knowledge, yet he embraced it without a second thought. It was magical. It was beyond any explanations or expectations. Experiencing the beauty of this rose was the most enjoyable time of his life. The thorns slowly appeared over time, yet he never questioned the rose. He firmly yet gently grasped the rose. Slowly he could see his hand becoming dyed with crimson over time. It made no difference to him. This rose was everything. He lived to please this rose, but love is a double-edged sword. It could fuel happiness for ages, yet drown you in sorrow. Eventually, he could see the petals falling. He didn’t want to believe his greatest fears were true.

Slowly, but surely the petals continued to sway away. The beauty and elegance of the rose remained. This rose was powerful, but not invincible. He tried to comfort the rose to the best of his ability, yet the final petal fell. The thorns no longer pierced his skin. The rose was gone…, but he couldn’t lose that rose. How could he lose such perfection and not fight? So he did. He fought for the rose, and for one final time, he embraced the beauty of the rose bearing no petals at all. He lost. The rose was gone, no beauty, no petals, no thorns… just nothing. Being without the rose was more painful than any thorn that rose ever had a chance to bear. The absence of love, something so painful it made someone who had lost everything smile through their tears. Never once in all the pain he was going through did he blame the rose for anything. He did not regret falling for the rose. He loved the rose more than his own life. To some, you may be pretentious enough to believe that his words are an exaggeration, but for someone enveloped by the hands of love, there is never a limit to what they would do for the person they loved. He didn’t want another rose. When he had to say goodbye to the rose for the final time he thought about going to the garden to wait to be reunited with the rose. He thought that maybe if fate willed it to be so, then one day the two of them would be together again in the garden for eternity. He knew that life wasn’t worth living without that rose, without his source of love, beauty, contentment, compassion, good, and happiness. 

Some may think that his pain is a part of the normal course of life, that he is acting irrationally, and should just get over it. To them, I say that they should find love and watch it be torn away from them against their will while all they can do is watch. Only then can true pain be experienced. If you have never experienced love then the absence of it means nothing to you. Only once you understand the concept of a rose and its thorns, can you understand the true concept of life and death. An unholy chaotic balance of love and loss, hatred and benevolence, war and peace. So many secrets to life, all locked behind The Thorn of a Rose