Flower Lessons
I've had the most unexpected of teachers lately
A month ago I subscribed to this weekly service that delivers flowers
Just a small bottle with a few flowers in it
A different surprise of colors and shapes every week
A lot of my friends are the "flowers die so what's the point" type
And yet I always find myself thinking how beauty is a virtue,
how sprinkling some of the natural world's beauty into our homes and inner worlds has a power beyond the fact that it won't last forever
Today I was throwing away one of last week's wilted sunflowers
And as I tossed it in the bin I caught myself almost silently whispering, "thank you for bringing me joy"
(yes I talked to the flower )
And it got me reflecting on how therapeutic having and caring for these flowers has been for me over the past few weeks
As a therapist, I'm well aware of the powerful impact owning pets and gardening can have on our mental health
The power of the life they inject into our spaces
and even more so into ourselves
And yet it never occurred to me that a small bunch of flowers in a bottle could do the same
But it has
These flowers teach me about impermanence
The inevitability of death afterlife
And that the end (no matter how quickly it comes) doesn't discount the value of the legacy, purpose and beauty that the life before it served
We live in a time where people are freaking out about a virus and it's a powerful reflection of the conflicted relationship we have with death.
Our resistance of the natural and inevitable
And somehow spending time with flowers is showing me how their death takes nothing away from the amount of joy they brought me.
The beauty I still see even when they're gone
The whole world has looked more beautiful to me since
Spending time with flowers reminds me how impermanence doesn't have to take away from our ability to appreciate the beauty of the moment we're in
(To state the obvious, this in no way discounts the immense and painful grief that death often brings with it. It simply highlights the profound value of the life lived before the death, in spite of the fact that this life will eventually end)
It's also been beautiful to tend to and nurture life
The simple things like changing the water and trimming the stems and adding sugar to nourish the flowers
It's inspiring and uplifting for me to nurture vitality in my own life
How do you like to nurture life and attend to beauty in your own life?