I woke up this morning and threw myself into an active start, taking care of all the babies downstairs, before falling into my desk chair and catching up on the news.
At 5:30 it is still very much the domain of darkness, so there isn’t very much I can do while I am being crawled on and attacked by five furry little innocents. I don’t turn on the light, because I leave the door open for the adult cats to go in and out and if I turn on the light it invites every mosquito in FL for breakfast.
So I generally just sit there in the darkness, drink my coffee and plan out my day ahead.
By the time it got bright enough to turn on the light, I had already gorged myself in all the bad news around the world and watched a few music videos on YouTube.
They were good ones, but very sentimental, so a few videos in, I realized that I was falling into melancholy and needed to dig myself out quickly before it became a spiral.
So I resolved to go to Hollis Gardens and check out whatever Mother Nature had in bloom there. It varies quite a bit from season to season and never lets me down.
It was a beautiful morning there and the butterflies and the bees were busy pollinating everything in sight. Pretty sure if I stood still long enough, they might have pollinated me.
I got pics of some lovely blooms and some of the pollinators. They are the end of this blog … hope you enjoy!
By the time I got back to my car, my mood was several shades brighter and it got me thinking about how easily we can alter our moods if we set out to. If we want to stay dark we most definitely can and the word for that is “sullen”, I believe.
But I chose to elevate myself and chose flowers to do so. Which brings me to the thought for today’s blog.
Why do flowers have such a genuinely positive effect on our spirits?
We give flowers to our Mom and she feels loved. To our girlfriend and she feels special.
We give flowers to our sick friend in hospital and they feel a little better. We give flowers to our dead friends to send them on their way.
We use flowers to make a corsage for that special prom and we wear them in our lapel when we make our confirmation or get married.
We acknowledge the change of seasons when the first flowers bloom in Spring.
In fact, in virtually every instance I can think of, the arrival of flowers is seen as a positive thing.
So, why is that?
If we were bees or butterflies, I could understand it as an indication of a time of plenty as we gorge ourselves on the pollen or whatever nectar we can extract from them. But I don’t see too much of that happening in all honesty, except at a funny farm perhaps.
So the sustenance we get from flowers can only be mental or emotional.
And that means the physical life-giving qualities of the flowers have no say in our enjoyment.
Flowers are beautiful and sometimes smell wonderful, I hear you say, and that is very true. But the whole concept of beauty and smell is a very subjective one.
We are each attracted to different traits that we define as beauty when it becomes physical attraction. And similarly with respect to smell, hence the range of perfumes and after shaves.
Which once again reinforces the notion that flowers are not really appealing to something physically for us.
So, our appreciation of them is on a very elevated level. An appreciation of an intangible beauty that gives us a mental or emotional uplift transcending any physical stimulus.
I have arrived at the conclusion that this is a genuine human trait that we humans have that most other creatures do not. The ability to truly value and appreciate something that neither sustains or enhances us.
It is the same trait for which we appreciate art and poetry. It is the sign of an elevated mind for whom the world provides much more than physical or material things to us.
Yes, there are base humans that only choose to gorge themselves in the physical and material, but I promised myself today not to mention the RNC convention, so I won’t.
But the rest of us can look beyond the base level of Maslow’s hierarchy pyramid and aim to experience a life that is about love, esteem, and self-actualization.
To life your life in such a way, is to choose a life of true value. So make a point today, if you can, to stop and smell the roses.
… just a thought!
