The Grass that wasn't

On the face of it, this is a sketch of a flower and some grass. But what if I told you that all the shapes in this sketch are blades of grass? This is the story of a blade of grass-that-wasn't...

Once upon a time, there was a patch of grass. Very pretty, delicate blades of grass. Some were tall while others, short; some grew straight upright, while others grew which ever way they liked. But they were all blades of grass. Save one. It did not look, think or behave like the others. It had wings like no other grass around it. But it grew and flourished, happy to be in the patch, until one fateful day when a tall blade said: "You don't look like like any grass I know". Another said, "You don't belong". And a third said "You are flawed!"... The grass-that-wasn't began to doubt itself. Soon it grew sad. It stopped sticking its head out each morning, no longer eager to catch the sun - or the cool rain... It began to wilt. "I am flawed", it thought. "I don't belong", it thought. Not once did the grass-that-wasn't or the other grass pause to think that maybe, this grass was not a grass at all...

And so-the-grass that wasn't stayed unhappy. It never tried to live a life as anything other than a flawed grass. It remained the grass-that-wasn't. While the other blades of grass grew and flourished, the-grass-that-wasn't remained unhappy, its wings ignored and untested.

-The end.-

Yup, no happy ending :-) That's life sometimes, isn't it? I wish each of us bears that in mind the next time we write someone off for not thinking/ looking/ sounding/ living like us. Can't help but wonder... What might the grass-that-wasn't have achieved, if just one voice had said, "Wait - you are not a grass at all! You might be a really flawed grass, but you'd make a perfect flower!"? What might have been, I wonder?