Do you love flowers too?
I am absolutely crazy about flowers.
As a kid, I used to draw people completely covered in flowers, and houses made of flowers, and I would paint flowers on any surface where colour would stick.
And even now, after half a century of experience and maturity (not!😀) I still cannot get enough of them. I have some tattooed on my skin, I have flowers on my plates, on my stationery, on my clothes, and if I see any object decorated with pretty flowers, I find it monstrously difficult, not to buy it.
Do you know if this particular kind of mental disorder has a name? 🙃🌸🙃🌼
Anyway, I remember having a beautiful conversation with my friend and colleague Rachel a couple of years ago, and she came up with this great image, she said that we’re all flowers that bloom in their own time. I was struck by the beauty and the deep truth of that.
And I couldn’t help thinking about a wonderful song by Richard Strauss, called “Die Georgine” – The Dahlia. It goes:
Why, dahlia, appear so late?
The roses have told their tale
And the honey-sated bee
Has chosen where to lay its head.
Are these nights not too cold for you?
How do you survive these days?
What if I brought you springtime now,
You fiery yellow dreamer?
What if I watered you with May dew,
Drenched you in the light of June,
But ah! you would not be then the last,
Nor proud to be unique.
What, O dreamer, do I tempt you in vain?
Then give me your sisterly hand,
I’ve not known May-time in this life,
Just as you’ve not known the spring.
And as with you, fiery yellow flower,
Love stole late into my heart,
Late or early, it is the same
Enchantment and the same pain.
Translation © Richard Stokes
The dahlia is one of my absolute favourite flowers, and it belongs to the category of the late blooming perennials. Funny… I’ve always considered myself the latest bloomer on the planet!
And yes, definitely a slow-growing perennial!
Who says that we all need to bloom in spring?
Everyone expects it from us… I’ll admit that it would have made life a lot easier. As a kid and through all of my youth, I met so many others who seemed to have it all figured out. They knew what they wanted, they had a strong identity, a strong style, a clear vocation. And I was always left wondering what I wanted, who I was, why I was so strange, and what on earth I should do with my life.
This made me suffer back then, but now I can accept that it was ok, and that I needed this time to come to understand something important. And the important thing to understand was not WHAT I was meant to do, it was WHY I haven’t done what I was meant to do. And this is because I was not able to listen to my soul’s voice, because I was deafened by all the noise around me, and in my own mind.
I’m now convinced that human beings are a kind of plant that should bloom in every moment of its existence.
Not early, and then wither. Not late, after decades of winter. Our souls know no seasons, they’re eternal, and since they’re made of pure love, they cannot but bloom all the time, and in all eternity. When we’re not blooming, it’s because we’re disconnected from our sun, our energy, our rain, our nourishment.
Your mind can be a mean, fearful, and overprotective gardener. If you feel that your petals are wrinkly and pale, just tell your gardener to leave you out under the open sky and go on a holiday!
