Sunflower Truth

Just saw this amazingly awesome meme and

Me: OMG! That’s the most beautiful thing ever! Nature is the OG harbinger of a wonderful, beautiful life

Other Me: I bet that’s a total crock of internet shit

Yeah, it’s like living with two squabbling siblings in your head. Don’t feel sorry for me, it’s my husband that’s the saint.

Anyway, Me and Other Me had to know so we go to the googles

Fact is, sunflowers don’t turn and face each other.

Other Me: Told you

Another fact, they don’t track the sun during the day either.

All the Mes: Huh?

Nope. If you simulate a different sun pattern time, the flowers will stick to their own rhythm and become off sync with the movement of the “sun”. Sunflowers are inner wired with a circadian rhythm that varies their stem growth which tracks the flower head east to west. Once the flower fully matures, the flower head will stay facing permanently east.

Therefore, they neither react to cloudy and gray nor the sunny and bright. Additionally, what this picture has captured is a grown, and not yet grown sunflower occupying the same place.

Other Me: That shit about the sun is a little sad, but worth it to obliterate another piece of internet drivel.

Me: A little sad?? A little?? It’s a lot sad. They are sunflowers for crying out loud and the symbol of keeping your chin up and face in the light, and reaching up, and…and…and…well, now I just can’t.

I thought about the sunflower a little longer in an effort to find an appropriate middle ground for my inappropriately dramatic selves. And, in sincerity, I do think that much of every question is already answered somewhere in the cycles and behavior of nature.  

So I propose this about our friend the sunflower.

I agree it was a little cool to think about this flower hanging out in nature doing whatever its little flower self had to do to keep its face in the sun. But honestly, this is way cooler. The sunflower is nobody’s punk – not even then sun. Sure, Sunflower bounces around giving off the airy vibe of peace, love, and sunshine, but don’t mistake its daily yoga practice for putting up with just anybody’s bitch ass. Sunflower has its own shit to handle.  Sunflower has its own groove, its own rhythm. And Sunflower is gonna follow it – rainy day or no.

Bonus thought. Yes, I know if is just a meme. By the way, this last idea is probably gonna sound a bit heavier than I intend it to, but whatevs. I think it’s important that you know I thought it in the midst of everything going on up there.

Anyway, I know it is just a meme. I also know that, unlike many memes, this small bit of misinformation is pretty benign and harmless. But it is still misinformation. And, if I tie back into my thought that answers to our greatest challenges are probably waiting to be found in the natural, then misinformation can be detrimental.  

More over (and this is where I know it gets a little much, but still true), the past few years have made owing, speaking, protecting my truth top priority. A by product of that is the allowance, hope, and expectation that those around me have some of that going on themselves. Sunflower has that and deserves to be appreciated for its actual truth, not some truth some internet meme maker created about it. I get super defensive of truth – even the little Sunflower’s.

Although, honestly, Sunflower probably doesn’t care what you think about it. There’s another life lesson in nature.