Replica of my Unknown Face

I am obsessed with zinnia, daisy, hosta and dahlia blossoms these days as the sun sets sooner and I crank up the heat in my home.  These last summer days when it's really fall is a curious time for buds such as this little zinnia bloom to be reaching for life and yet here we are.  Carl Jung has written that, "Projections change the world into the replica of one's own unknown face."  And maybe flowers do that very thing for me as they seem to be the gatherer of my projections, reflecting back to me who I am and might be.  If I listen.  Take this current bud fascination.  An attraction to the late bloomers if you will.  Late bloomers.  Better late than never.  Yes, it seems silly.  And yet, as I feel myself grow and change which is odd in that I am 68 but nonetheless, tsunamis and earthquakes rumble in my soul.  What to make of that I wonder?  That it's a curiosity that at any time in my life, even as I near 70, a deep and structural change, a  realignment can and is happening.   I choose to believe that my draw to the potential and bundled up expansion of life these late fall blossoms contain reflect me, maybe even help me find my way.  Last night I had an epiphany that nobody can make me mad.  This revelation was the outcome of a rare and painful verbal exchange with  a loved one that resonated in my shoulders and head for hours.  We resolved our loud differences shortly thereafter, but as I lay in bed last night it occurred to me that I was the one who got mad, well she was visibly upset, too, but right now this is all about me.  Nobody can make me mad.  Anybody can do and say anything to me but it is all about my reaction.  I cannot control anybody.  I became mad but I allowed it.  Maybe that's the bigger revelation of late.  I could counsel you on this, have even taught it in a university-level course, but I've never truly felt that in my being.  It is my choice on some level to be mad.  Or not.  If I pull back my projections I can see who I am and in that nobody can make me feel mad, hurt, sad, happy, stupid or brilliant, as funny as Red Skeleton or as romantic as Juliet on the balcony swooning over Romeo.  And in that is the strength of who I really am.  The superhero female warrior I write about in my science fiction story set a hundred years in the future.  But maybe the future is as near as this late-blooming purple zinnia blossom ready to burst.  Patiently growing right outside my door.