What Is The Flower To Do?

…. every single flower wants to be plucked, admired, sniffed, carried around, displayed and boasted about to friends, family and anyone that cares or cares not to listen. The flower glows in this kind of attention, it radiates and its beauty is enhanced and accentuated. The flower lives for attention and admiration. Show me a flower that does not want this and you have a liar on your hand. It is in the flower’s DNA! All the days and years of the flower, it craves, longs and desire attention and admiration even on it’s death bed, when it’s all old and wrinkly. Which is why you see the flower struggling to hold it together and wanting to strike a pose. Some flower do curl up and give up before the time when the lack of attention becomes unbearable.

The flower wants and needs to be watered, nourished, nurtured and fed and then it gives and gives and gives. I remember for my 50th birthday, my family gave me a bouquet of red roses, now that was some red roses! It just wouldn’t go, just a bit of watering, some flower food at the beginning, a bit of triming here and there and it was just going strong from day to day into weeks.

Now I have to put my hands up and admit I am not always good with flowers, some don’t do as well in my care. Sometimes I don’t know what to do, I don’t water enough, I over water, other times I put them on the wrong place, wrong vase, don’t trim right or whatever and they shrivel up and die. I just gather them and drop them in the bin. This is the nature of the flower plucker. We see the flower, love it, admire it’s beauty, pluck, sniff it, dance around with, stick in our button hole, flower is happy, we are happy, looks like it is going to be an everlasting relationship, ‘five minutes’ later we no longer feel like having a flower stuck on us, we grab it without any care and chuck it in the bin, the relationship is over even before it started! Other times we buy a bouquet, get the most beautiful vase, flowers in, placed it in the room, and we forget all about it, total neglect in a darkened room. Our flower plucker is distracted, overwhelmed with life. Two weeks later he enters the room, the beloved flower is all gone. A sad ending indeed.

Some flowers decide they can’t endure this pain of neglect and short lived temporary affection and they grow thorns, big spikey dangerous thorn and resolve that no one will ever pluck them again and rightfully so, they are never plucked, they live and die a life of never knowing the joy of belonging, however short lived and temporary it might be.

Other flowers accept the nature of the game, enjoy the 5 minutes of fame, of attention, they get there ‘lights! camera! action!’ and its all over. At least they enjoyed the whirlwind of attention and admiration before it all died down.

The nature of the plucker is selfish and self-centred, the feelings of the flower is not considered, does not even come into the equation. It is all for the temporary, unsustainable, fast changing, inconsistent delight of the plucker. The plucker is childlike, indecisive, easily swayer, distracted, neglecting with peaks and troughs of emotions.

The jury is still out on which is the best way to swing? Grow thorn or not grow thorn, 5 minutes of fame or no fame, be admired temporarily or drive pluckers away.

What is the flower to do?