Heroes Not Zombies

We have a tree paeony in the garden. It’s quite a tall plant now, and it produces a glorious flower once every year. I think in its best year it produced three flowers, but most years, it just produces one. That rarity makes the flower even more special. How amazing is it to wait a whole year, anticipating the swelling of a bud, seeing the curled petals emerge then unfurl in the sun to fully open up to the world for a few days. Look at the abundance of pollen. There’s so much it has spilled out all over the white petals. The flower lasts for only a few days, then the petals fall off and the paeony gets into creating and distributing fertilised seeds again. That transience also enhances the sense of awe I have when I see this beautiful flower.

In Japanese aesthetics transience ranks very highly. They celebrate the cherry blossom every year by reporting it on the nightly TV news and splashing photos across the front pages of the newspapers. I’ve seen cherry blossom maps on TV in Japan which are the equivalent of weather maps but instead of showing the weather track the progress of the cherry blossom across the country from the south to the north.

I remember going to see a “millennium plant” once in the Royal Botanic Gardens….one of those creatures which only produces flowers once every hundred years or so. I can’t remember the proper name of the plant, but I felt so privileged to witness its flowers in full bloom.

We have a similar response to eclipses, and to unusual conjunctions of planets or stars in the night sky, and to the appearance of comets. Their rarity makes them more special, and we then experience these events as more significant.

Awe and wonder. The more I experience awe and wonder, the higher I rank the quality of my life. In France there is this word, émerveillement, which is one of my most favourite French words. It means “wonder”, “amazement”, “awe”, “marvel”, and various other English words, because in English there isn’t a direct equivalent single word. “L’émerveillement du quotidien” is one of my most favourite French phrases. It means to find this wonder and awe in daily life.

Well, I guess it’s pretty easy to find wonder and awe in the face of the unusual, the long anticipated, the rare and the peculiar. But actively seeking amazement, awe and wonder in the everyday takes life to a new level. Will you find some every day if you are looking? My answer would be “probably”. I do. But even if you don’t having the intention, having the goal if you like, every day of seeking out what’s awesome and marvellous, will open your mind and your heart to the exactly those possibilities.

I think the conscious intention to seek “émerveillement” opens us up in the way this tree paeony flower has opened up in this photo I’m sharing with you today. And when we do that life becomes just a bit more special, just a bit more magical.

Try it for yourself.