There is something rather admirable about flowers. They get on with life without making a fuss. They do not hold meetings to discuss their future, worry about missed opportunities, or lie awake at 2am wondering why things have not gone according to plan. They just get on with the business of bloom.
Human beings, unfortunately, are made of more complicated material. We make plans, grow attached to them, and then behave as though the universe has committed a personal offense when the information we have changes or situations change and we stare at new circumstances, hoping that a stern letter of complaint might produce results.
It rarely does. The universe like SBI has never been particularly good at customer service on a hot Monday afternoon.
I have always enjoyed photographing flowers. They are beautiful, patient subjects, although a sudden gust of wind can make them surprisingly uncooperative. But then there is always something else to photograph when flowers don’t behave themselves. Like dew drops on a leaf or an empty field with an old gate. Zen wisdom -The photograph I had planned may be lost, but the day need not be.
And the flowers? They will continue doing what flowers do. They will appear in gardens, along roadsides, in fields, and in the cracks between paving stones. They will make the best of sunshine and rain without demanding that either should have arrived according to schedule.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether the unexpected parts of life have given me better photographs than the carefully arranged ones.
Flowers remind me that beauty does not always need favourable circumstances. They remind me that something small can make a considerable difference to the landscape, and that even the most unremarkable patch of ground may have a surprise in store.
Above all, they remind me to look.
To look beyond the immediate disappointment, beyond the changing plans, beyond the gloomy forecast and the nagging conviction that things ought to have turned out differently.
Because…after all…the flowers will blum anyway.