Autumn is always a time for reflection: time to ponder on the passing of seasons, the quick passing of summer and the time for death and renewal. This is the time I decide on new adventures for the coming year.This usually means taking interesting courses. However this is not the subject I have chosen to talk about. Today I will talk of something else. All this summer I have been musing on the life cycle of the lowly sunflower and wish to share these thoughts with you.
My daughter planted several sunflowers seeds in spring and I have been watching their amazing growth. The sunflower's purpose in life is to reach up to the sky and turn it's face to the sun to enable the seeds to grow and mature so they can fall to the ground and replenish the earth with more sunflowers-really the purpose of all living creatures including us. This they did admirably and because it was a hot long summer they grew and stretched and tilted their faces to the sun until they were ten feet tall giants with huge heads at least a foot across. As the summer lengthened the sunflower heads turned away from the sun, slowly drooped and faced the earth. In my ignorance I thought their thick stems were too weak to hold them up and suggested propping with sticks, but my daughter said no--they did this purposely to prevent the birds eating the seeds and to facilitate the dropping of the seeds to the ground.
Two weeks ago, after the rains came, I drove out to visit and saw to my horror three giant decapitated sunflower heads plopped haphazardly in a wagon looking very sad indeed. The rains had overwhelmed them-they could no longer ripen in the sun. The heavy rain had dragged the heads into the muddy ground so they were cut off. I found this shocking- three great giants cut down in the prime of life before finishing their task.
Why did these giants fail? Why were they felled? They failed of course because they had been planted in the rain forest-that is why. They should have been planted in southern France where a Van Gogh could paint them in all their glory and where they could complete their task. I mourned their passing and their loss of purpose but my daughter pointed out that many of the seeds were still capable of ripening when the heads are put into the sun again-so not all is lost.
I took heart and remembered we humans sometimes too are felled or fall or falter before completing what we set out to do. We also have a choice and can change and adapt when life becomes difficult as these giants did and can still have a purposeful life for we too are the giants of our very own world.
So take heart dear readers -remember you are the giant of your own world no matter what comes this season and take charge.
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