Flowering Fridays: Daisies

A type of daisy, captured at Ridgeview Farm, Arc of Appalchia Preserve

According to Wikipedia, it is thought that the name "daisy" is a corruption of "day's eye", because the whole head closes at night and opens in the morning.  Chaucer called it "eye of the day." 

I love thinking of the daisy as being the eye of the day.

There is something about a daisy that seems to be saying an emphatic and boisterous "yes!" to life and that it so utterly open to whatever the day will bring.

I notice how often I can be like a daisy at night. Closed off. Closed to possibility. Hiding my bloom. Finding comfort in the darkness.

But how I want to be is open to the light. In full bloom. Exuberant. Celebratory. Wide open. Receiving.

What I especially love about these daisy photos is that they are beautiful in their imperfections. (You might not even have noticed the imperfections. I sure didn't the first time I looked at the picture. I only noticed the beauty.)

There are some spots of what I imagine is pollen. The petals are not perfectly symmetrical. Some petals are of different length.

Still, the beauty of the flower is there. The flower is perfect just as it is.

In the past, I have worked so hard to cover my imperfections, wanting desperately to appear perfect.

I'm finding that it's exhausting to live that way. I'm also learning that my beauty is there with the imperfections. And I'm learning this too: my beauty is in the imperfections. (This has been huge for me to see.) I can stand in the day's eye and let me -- the whole  of me -- stand open to the sun.

Tell me, where are your beautiful imperfections? And how can you stand in the eye of the day and allow them to shine?