Our sense of incompletion comes not from lacking something, but from the stubborn and relentless act of comparing ourselves to others. The flower doesn’t look at its neighbor and think, I should be taller, or redder, or more like a rose. It just unfolds in the sun, moment by moment, wholly itself.

We, however, are caught in the painful illusion that we must be better than or different from who we are to be worthy of love. But the lesson of the flower is clear: There is no other. There is only this – this moment, this self, this blooming.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening