A few years ago in late winter, I purchased a bunch of pussy willow stems at Costco. I took them home and plunked them into a large vase and added water.

Because life was busy, I completely forgot about the stems. They were unseen --- ignored and neglected --- on a table in the dark entry while the kaleidoscope of life swirled around them.

A few weeks went by.

One day, I noticed something that caught my eye – green! I grabbed the vase of now dark, murky water and eagerly took it into the kitchen. There I saw that several stems had budded, in spite of the lack of fresh water or sunlight. I washed the vase, changed the water, and placed them into my kitchen garden window, fascinated.

Over the next couple weeks, about half the stems continued to come alive, budding and leafing out beautifully. And I learned a valuable lesson: we flounder or flourish right where we are, on a continual basis.

I can’t explain why some stems remained dormant. But I can explain why some stems flourished. They continued to grow and take in nutrients from available sources around them.

Those stems leafed out, grew roots, and I eventually planted them in my garden where they continued to grow into healthy, vibrant plants. To this day, they are still growing and blooming annually. The others that remained dormant? Into the trash.

Flounder or flourish.

Do you ever wonder why two executive assistants, in the same environment, do not both grow and flourish? Or why some administrative assistants consistently seek self-development, becoming excellent leaders, working side by side among others who “do a job”?

I believe each person’s “want to” creates within them an eco system of actualization, creating vastly different results. This occurs even while sharing the same vase (environment) with others who don’t grow or flourish.

So it isn’t the vase, the darkness or the water. It’s continuing to grow and take in nutrients from available sources, consistently.

How is your “want to” today? Are you set to flourish, or flounder, in your vase?

Nancy Fraze is a member of Office Dynamic’s Media Team and a frequent contributor to the OD blog; she also blogs about film at allbestfilms.wordpress.com. She is Poet Laureate Emeritus for the Town of Danville. Nancy runs a creative writing and editing business, “Phrase, Ink” and published her first poetry book, “Paper Wait” in 2008.