Prior to attending Creighton University, I had lived my entire life in Portland, Oregon. Although I love almost everything about my hometown, one thing that I love most about Portland has to be its endless connections to roses. Roses have been integrated into many facets of daily life in Portland, leading to its official (and affectionate) nickname being “The City of Roses.” Additionally, Portland is home to The International Rose Test Garden, Rose City Park neighborhood, and The Rose Quarter. Although its name was changed to The Moda Center in 2013, the home of the Portland Trail Blazers will always be named The Rose Garden in my mind.
Although the phrase has different origins than Portland, “Take a minute to stop and smell the roses” will always have special meaning for me. In Portland, it is not uncommon to catch a passerby who has stopped to smell a rose and appreciate its beauty. However, the significance of this idiomatic phrase changed and grew when I first began my junior season of high school football. Throughout my junior season, I began to have more and more opportunities to play with the Varsity team and be coached by the Varsity coaches. While I hold all of my now-former coaches in high regard, one coach stood out for me from the beginning—the headline coach John Andreas. Time and time again he would preach to the linemen the same few things:
“Work hard, get off the ball fast and strong, leave everything that you have out on the field. At the end of the day Gentlemen, stop, take a moment, look around, take it all in, and smell the roses. It doesn’t get any better than this.”
Since my last football game with Coach Andreas I have learned to read between the lines, so to speak, and I have come to better understand what it means to truly “stop and smell the roses”. In our world today, most people live extremely busy, hectic, and stressful lives--I know that I am certainly no exception. I still have very clear memories of the 18+ hour days I experienced in high school—a full day of classes, sports practices after school, a brief fast-food dinner, back to school for extra-curricular meetings, and then I would finally get to go home only to have hours of homework to finish. If this schedule is reminiscent for you, then I sympathize with you completely.
Regardless of how busy, tired, and stressed-out I was (and still am), brief moments of calm and rest appear. Finally! A chance to take a deep breath, temporarily rid yourself of the stress, and collect yourself. But also, a chance truly recognize how fast everything seems to be taking place. It is also in these moments that I most feel like I am Ferris Bueller from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. Seriously, “life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”.
“Stop, take a moment, look around, take it all in, and smell the roses. It doesn’t get any better than this.”
“Stop”, “take a moment”, and “look around” are all pretty self-explanatory pieces of advice. However, that is only part of the saying. “Take it all in, and smell the roses. It doesn’t get any better than this.” Those statements are a little more difficult. For me, it means using those brief moments of calm to gain a true appreciation for what you are experiencing in your life as well as what is going around you. Be it good, bad, happy, sad, confusing, incredible, beautiful, unfortunate, or anything other type of experience one may be having.
I am of the opinion that smelling the rose and observing its beauty does not mean that you actually “stopped and smelled the roses.” By just smelling the flower and observing the beauty, you are completely overlooking the rose’s thorns. You are forgetting about the incredible array of different forces that combine to make that rose possible. You also fail to see that a blooming rose is literally changing before your eyes—a blooming rose’s lifespan is incredibly quick, after all. Before you know it, the rose is gone and it only exists as a memory in your head. Though this amount of active thought may be one of the last things one wants to be doing during a brief moment of calm, remember this: contemplation leads to appreciation.
Next time you get caught up in life, get bogged down by the stressors of life, or feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day, just remember to take a moment to stop, take it all in, and smell the roses before you miss the chance to do so! Being alive, living life, interacting with others, and experiencing all of life’s wonders—it doesn’t get any better that that!
