Poppies
If you hear the same topic from three different unrelated sources within a 48-hour period, pay attention. It likely is the Universe trying to get your attention.
So within a 48-hour period, stories about ‘poppies’ were coming my way. One from a creative photographer who speaks ‘flower’ fluently showed me an incredible photo series of a poppy hunched over getting ready to stand-up straight and bloom. The second came from a woman who was surprised to see her husband had stopped to photograph a patch of poppies. And the third was the main word on my morning Wordscapes. I thought, ‘Well this is not by chance. What’s up with the poppies?”
So I began to research poppies. Although the word ‘poppy’ often conjures up the opium trade, according to Google, there are 250 species of poppies with perhaps the above California poppy being the most familiar to us. Fields of poppies spontaneously grew on the artillery fields after the fighting ended in WWI. Because of this, the poppy is a symbol in remembrance of that war.
The ceremonial clothing found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun was partially made from the poppy plant and his jewelry was engraved with the poppy (BBC Natural History Museum). I also remember being warned when I did an internship at a drug treatment program not to eat a poppyseed bagel before our mandatory drug testing…all interesting factoids but nothing resonated for me.
“Why Poppies and Me?”
Digging deeper into the feeling stratum where resonance lives, I recall that when I saw the photo series, I was struck by how the seedpod was so heavy that the stem was bent over, and what incredible strength the stem has to have to straighten itself before blooming. I started musing about the weight carried by women in the third trimester of pregnancy and then about the weight and responsibilities carried by women in general, but I ended up thinking about the enormous weight of the male role too, and how men don’t often talk about this.
Both genders are often 'fried' from responsibilities; many are also burdened by hidden betrayals that have never been processed let alone spoken about. We all have wounds from this very long evolutionary journey especially when we add epigenetic complications to our lived experiences. Since we are the same in this respect, there is really no shame...only the need to acknowledge the pain, find our stability again, and join the movement of Life.
Integration is the direction we are going.
These thoughts led to the second poppy story of the wife who witnessed her husband photographing poppies.
What she may not have noticed, but I certainly did, was the soft wonder in her face and gentle surprise in her voice. Since we can read ‘implicit,’ I knew something had changed for her, something grew, and her heart naturally opened a bit. Musing further, I thought of my work with couples and the powerful changes seen when the roles and armor are dropped, and the ‘real’ person enters the room and speaks. The energy changes; there is a hush when tenderness allows the entrance of love. This is sacred.
I recall Sarah Hrdy at the CARTA Conference on grandmotherhood saying something like, “You can have a wonderful trait, but if it is not expressed in the phenotype, it is invisible to natural selection” (Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny: Sarah Hrdy, From birth to Grandmotherhood, Childrearing in Human Evolution, February 21, 2014). This is absolutely true though attunement can give us a whiff of where the true Self might be hanging out.
She also talked about how babies carry their on ‘keep me’ advertisements at birth because natural selection made them plumper, which makes us crazy for them. Baby cuteness (large head and eyes, high forehead, small nose and mouth, plump body) was researched by Glocker and colleagues in 2009. They found that plumper babies were selected as more appealing by study participants. The cuteness factor has also been used to sell cars (Miesler, Leder & Herrmann, 2011)...imagine this design!
Evolution is still a force to contend with, that is, we are still evolving based on how we select or the decisions we make for survival. Robert Wright argues that there is a “universal human nature” that is evolving in the same direction in all cultures (albeit within different timings) towards social complexity. He also says that “some degree of social structure is built into our genes” (Nonzero, The logic of Human Destiny, 2000, p. 23). I find this reassuring.
What ‘some degree of social structure built into the genes' might be is the truth-based nature of our capital Self. For us to be truly who we are on the surface without fear is not only putting the Self in the phenotype for all to see (and select), but also it may be the needed factor for exponential change.
“We are deeply gregarious, and deeply cooperative, yet deeply competitive…the interplay…has been responsible for much suffering [but] the tension between them is, in the end, creative” (Wright, 2000, p. 27). I completely agree, but we need to find our superskills so we can show our inner face to others and speak our truth. Can we finally love ourselves? Can we see in each other our ragged souls knowing that we have all toiled? But more importantly, can we see the beauty we carry?
Lastly, Wordscapes, the third mysterious poppy--well I suspect this was just a reminder that I can speak from what I know, from my own thoughts and experiences without needing to get lost in the cognitive weeds ;-).
Poppies do not live in a concept. They show up anywhere they are welcomed. The very sight of them whispers...
CHANGE IS POSSIBLE
We, and all of our Children need this.
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