Don’t you love it when you come across nature that just exists without apology? Like an abandoned house overgrown with vines? Like when you find a single orange poppy growing in the middle of a paved parking lot. Like when you find lilies that have rooted under a fence?
It is as if the diversity of nature is staking a claim to life – staking a claim to existence. It is reminding the world that nothing is stagnant, and that nature will continue to persist and evolve.
Flowers have a way of saying “I exist, therefore I belong. I don’t need to ask for permission to be here….My presence is my permission to exist”.
Did you know that there are upwards of 400,000 variations of flowers in the world with new variations getting discovered each year? This happens without money or laws or voting. New flowers just keep coming into existence without any regard for bi-partisan support.
I mean, whenever we come across a random flower that has pushed its way up through the Earth despite the attempts of humankind to block it, we are kind of forced to stand in Awe and Wonder.
Wow. How did you get here?
We may touch it or smell it or gently cradle it’s tiny petals in our hand. We admire it and respect it for the effort it took to grow and exist in this place that told it not to belong.
I mean, you have to give flowers some credit – not only do they pop up in the most random places, but they do it with flair. They could just quietly edge against the bottom of the house and weave in and out of the dirt but no…. They grow straight up without apology and then because of the sheer delight of finally seeing the sun, they explode into a magnificent flower of every variation of every color in the rainbow.
I mean, Wow.
Nature is easy and flowing and beautiful and strong and unique.
Nature just is…. And yet us humans just can’t handle that lack of control over the diversity of our world.
Some of us will see a flower growing in the middle of a parking lot and we will stop and take a selfie with it, smiling that we just came across such a beautiful and precious thing in the world. We marvel at how the universe can create such amazing uniqueness in a land that was thought to be barren.
Some of us just walk right past the flower and don’t even see it – we don't have time for flowers.
Some of us don’t like that this flower is out of it’s place and will step on the flower for fun…maybe even pull off some of it’s leaves and call it names… just a little torture before we get bored and move on. We don’t really know why some of us choose to abuse the flower – Maybe the flower was growing too tall, maybe we don’t like how bright it is, maybe it was just in our way.
Then there are some of us that will look at the flower with fear and disdain and think “Oh no – We can’t have that. We can’t tolerate something so beautiful in the middle of our black and white street that we work so hard to pave and smooth and make uniform”. I mean, something about the mere existence of flowers really strikes a nerve for some of us, right? It's like the flower offended us or challenged our sense of power or maybe the existence of the flower challenged our own sense of belonging in the world social order. Some of us get so scared about new flowers that we want to have meetings and restrict the flower's access to care and support and plot ways to systematically destroy it and everything like it.
Some of us think that if we kill that flower then more flowers like it won't grow.
Some of us will watch the brutality unfolding before us and run to the flower’s rescue and try to save it. We may give it water, we may try to repair it’s stems. We may try to build a protective bubble around it. We may even uproot it and try to replant it in a different part of the Country where the laws are more friendly to the flowers.
Some of us stand and watch, thinking that somebody should really be doing something about the torture of those pretty flowers.
Some of us turn and walk away, because apparently nature is not everyone’s concern.
Some of us may think that the existence of the flower is wrong. But can nature ever be "wrong"? I thought that nature just IS. No flower is wrong or right…. They are just flowers that sprouted and are now trying to find our Sun.
And yet the flowers keep growing – they just keep appearing out of thin air. They grow on vines and in gardens and in fields. They grow at sea level and at altitude – I mean, they even grow on cactuses. They will grow over houses and cars and will go to great lengths to restore the Earth to its natural state – a natural state of diversity.
But Wow, to really stand in awe of nature and embrace the incredible concept that new flowers with different colors and shapes just emerge into existence all the time… without permission from you or me or Republicans or Democrats…or even the President.
They just exist because… Well, because they just do. They exist for the same reason that we all do.
Sometimes our only job as humans is to simply stand in awe of the incredible diversity of nature… and then actively work to protect it.
Change It Anyway 