One should look at a flower as one of nature’s countless wonders, for what a brutally specific and pretty sophisticated mechanism it is. Beyond itself, the flower is a small part of a greater whole, an even more sophisticated system you could look at as nature’s wonder, the whole world itself. In this big whole the flower has a well-defined purpose and whether this purpose can be fulfilled depends on if resources needed are supplied sufficiently.
As you separate the flower from the stem, the supply chain is cut off. Some residual resources still left in the pipeline will buy some time so the flower can keep up functioning. This way, it will spend the very rest of its existence with the impossible struggle to fulfil its purpose in the cycle of life.
Imagine, you are a cell out of a few billion others in such a dying flower. Looking at your position you ask yourself: if or how far it seems possible to influence the situation the system you are a part of got into. You start talking to some of the neighbouring cells, trying to discuss, maybe you should use the water and minerals you are left with for saving your own existence, and probably stop blooming. Some of the others will tell you, distribution of water is simply unjust, so you should work on that issue. The ones having the most of the resources will tell you, it is not right to take those away from them. Cells in the pollen tube would argue with cells in the petal like you have been blossoming so long, used up all the resources, so what about us now…?
Then in the end together with all your fellow cells in the big flower: you go down having these conversations, while the flower itself – regardless of the odds of success – will still be struggling to fulfil its role in the seemingly endless cycle of life.
Budapest, May 2020
