Rose, Bud, Thorn

Like all things, conversations run dry, relationships grow stale, and our lives become a cycle of the same boring small talk. In the last year, my friends and I have begun asking each other the all-too-popular conversation aid ‘rose, bud, thorn’, in which a rose is something good which has occurred in your life, bud is something you are looking forward to, and thorn is something negative. It began as a way for me to fill silence between friends who already seem to know all about me but has completely changed the way I approach both my relationships and personal views on life.  

Perhaps this sounds silly, the use of a children’s prompt learned through years of summer camp and after-school, making such a vast impact on one's life. The truth is, it is silly, and I am not going to tell you to implement this yourself, but sometimes life simply doesn’t make sense, and I find no joy in making every moment one of weight. So maybe ‘rose bud thorn’ is not an activity you bring to your life, but elements that can be taken from it probably should be. These elements include keeping in touch with the people in your life and slowing down on your own. Who knows, maybe you can even find your own whimsical, childhood activity that brings this to your day to day. 

As we grow older, it becomes harder to keep in touch with your friends, or even family, and being at a loss for what to talk about is just another hurdle in staying in touch. For my friends and I, rose bud thorn, or what we like to call RBT, has become our go-to in every situation. I hadn’t noticed that what had originally started as a way to fill an awkward silence had grown into such a large part of our connection until we went from seeing each other every day at university to hours apart over the summer. During this time, I began to receive a text from a group chat of friends that simply read ‘RBT?’. From there, this nightly tradition became something I looked forward to and when inevitably we came back to university it was as if I was never apart from these friends to begin with. This conversation starter began to spread between friend groups which also made interconnected gatherings less awkward and taught everyone a lot about each other with such simple questions. RBT has been used in more situations than I can likely recall whether it be a simple silence breaker when conversation goes stale, or an easy way to reach out to friends during busy (or far apart) seasons of our life. A simple, three letter acronym, has now become a way for my friends to keep in touch, which for many adults seems almost an impossible task. And though a three-part question may not seem like a lot of information, it is always better than nothing and often opens the gate for hours more of catching up.  

Now, this question doesn’t only become a way to build your relationships with others, but yourself as well. Answering such a simple question should be easy, but when surrounded by hustle culture where we are never given the opportunity to reflect on the moments of our day it can become quite difficult. But when we are asked to talk about our current lives, we are forced to slow down and think. On bad weeks, being asked the question can make it hard to find a rose, but the deeper you think the more you will find there is always good. Sometimes a rose can be a large success that you are then able to celebrate with all your friends, other times it is as simple as nice weather or a text that makes you smile. It also reminds you of all the things in your life that are coming up. Often, I find it is easiest to find buds for my answer and that reminder of things to look forward to can push me through hard days or weeks, knowing there is so much more to come. Being asked to reflect on my days, weeks, or months, has made me more reflective and grateful towards my own life, and I have begun to appreciate all the events within that I otherwise would brush off as insignificant. 

Rose, bud, thorn holds a special place in my heart and the hearts of my friends. What started as just a small icebreaker has become an ancho and light-hearted ritual in my friendships which have impacted me and my memories of this era in my life. No matter how silly this may seem, sometimes these playful traditions are exactly what we need to brighten our everyday lives.