Instill the wisdom of plants into yourself.
Today we will learn the “power of rounding out edges” from tropical water lilies.
Many plants that have evolved to live in water raise their leaves above the surface to perform photosynthesis. Since they live underwater, they don’t absorb enough sunlight. Among such underwater plants is the tropical water lily, whose leaves are so large, it forms them into a round shape in order to raise them over the water’s surface.

Forming a square or triangular shape makes the leaves lopsided.
But if they form a circular shape, their weight becomes evenly distributed.
The platter-shaped Victoria amazonica and Victoria cruziana are prime examples of this concept.

Both are species of water lily whose leaves create a perfect circle up to 2 meters in diameter.
These large leaves are so buoyant that even children can float on top of them without issue.

Nature is full of circles. You see them in tree rings and water drops, and you could even say the sun is the ultimate circle. Human beings are also a part of nature, so perhaps we can learn to form circular shapes of our own. What do I mean by this? Let’s practice and find out.

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The human world is linear and full of angles. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but at the same time, it has some harsh edges that would be better off with a bit of rounding.

For instance, think of the word “righteous”. We’ve learned that even when we claim to be right, it still causes conflicts and breaks our harmony. At the opposite end of righteousness is, after all, a different form of righteousness. The time is coming where we’ll round the sharp edges of that word. Now, if we round off the word “righteous”, what do you think we’ll end up with? What about if we rounded the word “perfect”?

We went a bit deep for a moment, but now we’ll condense this into an easy exercise.

Humans have one area where we tend to unconsciously make things neat and round. It happens when we pick nicknames or pet names for one another. We feel close to the people with whom we share pet names, don’t we? That’s because a pet name keeps the impression of the original name while rounding off its edges at the same time.

Try picking a pet name for an item near you as an experiment.

Let’s try it on the Victoria cruziana water lily first.
What kind of name would you give it? “Vicky”? Or maybe “Tori”? Take the next 15 seconds to think of a nickname.

Next, try giving yourself a pet name. Pick one that’s friendly and easy to say, in order to round off the edges between you and your surroundings. Take another 15 seconds, starting now.

Lastly, think of someone with whom you want a smooth relationship or a situation you want to go smoothly. In the case of a person, you can picture a superior you don’t like. In the case of a situation, a time in the past that you regret can also work. What kind of name would you put on these things? Remember that we’re picking “pet” names, so they must imply love. Take the next 30 seconds to think about this, starting now.

That last exercise may have been tough, but the point was to recognize that there’s a surprising amount of round things in our lives and that it takes a sense of humor to soften your edges. The word “harmonious” is written in Japanese with the characters for “round” and “full”. People who build smooth, round relationships with themselves and the world around them are strong. Take a moment once in a while to imagine being round, like the leaves of a water lily.