There are days when the world seems to have misplaced its sense of direction, its spectacles, and possibly the instruction manual on how to find your way back to sanity.
The outlook is gloomy, the weather is behaving like a disgruntled landlord, the to-do list is breeding overnight, and one begins to suspect that the universe has appointed a committee whose sole purpose is to test one’s patience. Naturally, the committee is very well funded.
At such moments, I find myself wandering outdoors with a camera. (Or rather I used to)
Not because I have any grand artistic plan or any hopes of making it big in the photography world. More often, I am simply looking for an elaborate excuse to avoid whatever sensible task is waiting for me indoors, wearing the patient expression of a disappointed schoolmaster.
And somehow, sooner or later, I find a flower.
It may be growing from a crack in an old wall, as though masonry were merely an inconvenient suggestion. It may be standing alone beside a dusty footpath. It may appear in the middle of a forest path where, only weeks earlier, there seemed to be nothing but dead leaves, dampness, and the general atmosphere of a place that had given up.
Flowers have always fascinated me.
Not because they are perfect….. Indeed, most of the flowers I photograph are gloriously imperfect. A petal missing here, a bent stem there, a leaf displaying the sort of enthusiasm for decay that would send a gardener reaching for a notebook and a mild sedative. Or maybe if he is serious about his job, a pear of shears.
Yet they bloom anyway.
No management meeting. No strategic planning session. No motivational speaker standing nearby shouting, “You can do this!” at a plant that has never once asked for advice.
They simply appear.
One day the view looks empty and lifeless. The next day there is colour, as though nature has quietly redecorated the world while everyone was busy complaining.
I have often thought that flowers are nature’s way of reminding us that despair is usually a temporary condition, though it does occasionally renew its subscription….sometimes a bit too frequently.
The woods know this.
Every year they spend months looking rather miserable. Bare branches. Mud. Endless rain. The sort of landscape that makes one wonder whether spring has forgotten the address, lost the map, or is waiting for someone else to go first.
Then, without warning, something blooms.
A tiny flower emerges from the undergrowth and behaves as though it owns the place, which, technically, it does.
A few days later there are dozens.
Soon entire hillsides are covered with colour, and the world has transformed from a damp apology into something resembling a miracle.
Hope, it seems, has a habit of arriving quietly.
Not with fanfare.
Not with fireworks.
Certainly not with a PowerPoint presentation….thank goodness.
Just a small flower pushing through the earth, declining to explain itself.
Many of my favourite photographs have been of flowers for this very reason. Whenever I see one, I do not simply see a plant. I see persistence.
I see something that endured storms, heat, cold, insects, wandering goats, careless boots and, occasionally, photographers crawling around on their hands and knees while muttering about depth of field.
And despite all that, it chose to bloom.
That feels important.
Life has a curious habit of convincing us that difficult periods will last forever. A disappointment arrives. A plan collapses. Someone leaves. Something ends. The future suddenly looks like an empty road disappearing into the fog, preferably with a sign warning that all optimism has been temporarily suspended.
Yet if nature teaches us anything, it is that empty roads rarely stay empty.
Perhaps that is why I continue photographing flowers.
They are not merely subjects…..They are reminders.
Reminders that life renews itself, usually without consulting us.
Reminders that difficult chapters eventually become stories, though some take longer to edit than others.
Reminders that light has a stubborn tendency to return.
And reminders that even when everything appears lost, something wonderful may already be quietly preparing to bloom just around the corner, entirely unaware that we have been catastrophising about life.
The flower does not know what tomorrow holds.
It blooms anyway.
There is a lesson in that.
One worth carrying with us, especially on the darker days.
And perhaps also on the ordinary ones, when life looks bleak, when the to-do list is breeding, the weather is sulking, and the universe’s patience committee is once again taking minutes.
So the next time life feels determined to trip over its own shoelaces, step outside if you can. Or open the window. And breathe.
Look for something small, stubborn, and unnecessarily beautiful. You may find a flower, a patch of sunlight, or merely a small bird or insect strutting about with the confidence of a senior civil servant. Any of these will do. The important thing is to remember that the world is still making room for wonder—and that, sooner or later, even the most overworked patience committee has to adjourn for chai.