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| Not my neighbor's flowers! Tulips captured in Millennium Park, Chicago (May 2025) |
I recently ended a relationship for personal reasons that aren't relevant to this reflection. Though not the reason we broke up, there was one seemingly small thing in the relationship that came up and was difficult to address, as it seemed trivial, compared to other big things that most reasonable people would agree are fundamental to look out for in a relationship. I'm not minimizing it - it was important to me and I know that's what matters - but I know that it may not be important to everybody, all things considered. So, for the purpose of this post, let's frame it like that. While I stood my ground on it, a part of me felt a little somehow for doing so at the same time.
Until I noticed a neighbor's flowers for the first time on my morning walk. I'm enjoying making a habit of these walks and I do them phone-free to disconnect, and pay attention to my surroundings. Every other day, I notice something new that I had not seen before. Like the fact that the house next to us has roses. Right outside our front door and I only noticed them a few weeks ago, tsk tsk! While those roses are very pretty, they're not the ones that caught my attention. Going around the corner and seeing a vibrant garden growing on the side of this house made me stop. I'd walked that corner so many times and never noticed those flowers!
It made me stop and think: God gave us flowers for a reason.
Yes. You know, I've always found it interesting that in Hollywood's imagination, aliens are scary beings with slime, 3 eyes, 5 heads etc, who want to dominate the earth. That says more about human beings - our fear of what we don't know. It's a wonderful, complicated world we have here on the blue planet, but why would they want us? If aliens have better technology, why would they need to bother us? It also says something about our lack of imagination. What if aliens are beautiful, brilliant and peaceful beyond our comprehension? I imagine they'd be so evolved that they don't even need to poop!
What does this have to do with flowers, you wonder? Think about it. If human beings created the earth, would we have flowers? If we had to build a new earth like they did on the show Paradise, what would that look like? On Paradise, it was probably optimal just because the billionaire creator lady lived down there. If management consultants advised on building a new earth, I don't think they would give us flowers. Grass, maybe. Trees for shade. Crops for food. If they could figure out how to ensure the ecosystem benefits of pollination or whatever, without growing actual flowers, I don't know that flowers would hold up to the dull grayness of maximizing efficiency.
God gave us flowers. Tiny beautiful things that catch our eye for seconds, and then we move on from, just grateful that they brightened our days. And that is so delightful to me. In relationships, the big things matter, as do the small, seemingly trivial things that spark joy.
In a world where one isn't coupling for survival, family alliances, or any other sense of obligation (real or imagined), what is the point of getting together for anything less? This is interesting because the older I get, the more of a romantic I become? A decade ago, I was "shining my eyes", worried about making the wrong decision, being very practical in my thinking about what I wanted in a partner or a relationship. Now, if I'm going to hitch my tent to someone's wagon, it cannot be for the practical reasons. Those big things need to work, yes, but our "little things" matter too.
Thank you to the neighbor whose name I do not know, whose beautiful flowers inspired the reflection that gave me the courage to accept this realization. Life isn't a bed of roses but we still have the roses for a reason, right?
