I have seen flowers come in storny places
And kind things done by men with ungly faces,
And the gold cup win by the worst horse at the races
So I trust, too. – John Masefield.

Life is messy, unpredictable, and occasionally brilliant. Stormy places can grow flowers. Horses you’d bet against can take home the gold. The world isn’t always what it seems, and that’s precisely why it’s worth sticking around.

How you see it, though, depends a lot on where you stand. The lenses you wear—shaped by your past, your scars, and your hopes—colour everything. Storms might look like chaos to one person and necessary rain to another. The trick isn’t to pretend you’re lens-free but to recognise the tint. To pause and ask, “Is this how things are, or just how I see them?”

And then, there’s trust. Not the kind you offer blindly, but the kind you live with—a quiet understanding that life, for all its storms, has a way of working things out. Trust is sitting with uncertainty, even when it’s uncomfortable. It’s knowing that flowers can grow through cracks and that a “no-hope” horse might just surprise you.

Hope isn’t naïve. It’s stubborn. It keeps you showing up, even when the odds don’t look great. It reminds you that the scars you carry aren’t just wounds—they’re proof you’ve lived through storms before.

That’s my note to myself. For today.

Stay alive to the oddities.

Be present to what’s in front of you, even if it doesn’t fit your map.

Trust that the story is unfolding as it should.

And keep an eye out for flowers. They show up in the strangest places.