If you bow at all, bow low!

I took this shot of the drooping tiny pink flowers when I last visited the Singapore Botanical Gardens, and have kept it in my photo archive until inspiration struck yesterday. Browsing through quotationspage.com, I saw this Chinese Proverb. "If you bow at all, bow low." and it seemed so apt as a caption for the photo.

Trying to find the meaning of this proverb on the internet though was a thoroughly frustrating experience. Though quoted on many English-based websites, none gave any hint as to its meaning (and one begins to wonder whether this proverb is understood at all by one and many). Finally, I found the Mandarin phrase for this proverb, and all became clear:

一不做，二不休 {yi bu zuo, er bu xiu}
transliterated to mean "if you choose not to do [don't do it at all, but if you choose to do it], then do it without rest [until it is completed]"

That I think is truly something to remember from time to time, especially in the busy times we live in with demands coming in from every direction and not enough hours in a day to satisfy them all.

And with that, I leave you with another picture of delicate little white flowers with their lovely tendrils, taken off a high shrub at the botanical gardens - when nature decides to amaze, even the smallest of flowers does not escape its notice!