Flowers Run The World

I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like flowers. Do those people even exist? You’d have to be from another planet, where flowers don’t grow, to have any hesitation towards them.

Flowers are like a magical portal into another world. Their colour, smell and hive mind seem almost alien. A bright blue and yellow flower looks like it’s from another dimension.

Which is why it’s no surprise we give flowers at times of high emotion. Romantic partners, people we have lost, birthdays, weddings. Flowers mark an occasion with importance.

Flowers are important.

They wake us up. You can be going about your day, stuck in your own daily loop of thought-soup, walk past a flower and immediately your reality is pierced with a pop of colour against an otherwise colourless environment. That spark and explosion of creativity.

Flowers are creative.

People who have life figured out buy flowers randomly. What motivates someone to do that? A bunch of flowers is like grabbing a bunch of interstellar universe-expanding material. Studies should exist that interrogate this angle of flowers. A random Wednesday is no longer a random Wednesday when you come home and cut some flowers into a vase. A room becomes a vessel for these reality-altering objects.

Flowers are a proposal.

Ever tried mixing flowers? That’s where it gets interesting. They aren’t meant to be separated. Their species and colours are meant to be brought together. Watching a florist arrange flowers is like watching someone create the universe. I’ll mix Asters with Hyacinths. Red and pink. I’ll just put Pluto there and a ring around Saturn. Because it looks great. Because I felt like it. Because they work together. Why not?

Why not flowers? The argument is incredibly weak. Even our best lawyers and corporate depositioners couldn’t design an argument to not flower. “We don’t want more colour in the world.” The silence would be deafening. People would shuffle. “Not sure about that…” you’d hear someone say.

Yes, I’m not sure about that either. Roses belong in every field and orchids and daffodils and daisies should spread through every dead ground and post-industrial estate until the entire area is so colourful you need to shield your eyes from the spectrum of colour.

Our own projected thoughts cloud the true meaning of flowers. We focus more on the intentions of the person giving them than the plants themselves. The bunch clutched between the fingers of a hopeful romantic or arranged in vases by a housekeeper is far more mystical, more powerful than the person holding it. Flowers are smart, ambitious and capable. They inspire everything and everyone around them to be more them.

Flowers grow you.

Flowers make the bar very high. Visually and spiritually. They plant seeds in you that, in seconds, grow the parts of yourself you always want to be. They unlock things in you. We do flowers a disservice. We put a rover on Mars before putting flowers in ourselves. But what’s bloomed is bloomed and what’s not will be by proximity to a dahlia, a foxglove, a bird of paradise.

Thank you for reading Operating Self.

I release articles once a day at the moment as I am doing the 100 articles in 100 days challenge.

My other current goal is to get one stranger from the internet (that is someone who does not know me IRL) to buy me a coffee. If you want that to be you (and you’d kind of be the first paying subscriber in a way, which is pretty cool) you can buy me a coffee here. More coffee means more caffeine means more ideas means more articles.

Thank you and I hope this piece, and what’s on this site, helps/inspires/creates something for you.