Taking beauty seriously is serious business.....

                                    

Georgia O'Keeffe, an American painter, painted numerous large paintings depicting flowers.

Flowers? Why? I thought as I flicked through a book of her works.

"What's so interesting about flowers?" I muttered under my breath as I flicked through page after page.

Then.....I got it.

Benevolence and beauty just seemed to ooze off the paintings.

I connected with something in those paintings and since then my view of flowers has changed dramatically.

So, what according to evolution theory is the purpose of flowers?

Darwin himself wrote: "flowering plants are an abominable mystery".

In our quite utilitarian existence, do flowers actually have a purpose?

Besides some of them being beautiful to look at and smelling rather nice, 

do we really need them?

(Painters through the ages seem to have a penchant for painting them, but honestly, how many paintings of flowers does humanity really need?)

Pollination is an essential ecological function, actually, without pollinators the human race and all of Earth's terrestrial ecosystem wouldn't survive, so says those in the know, so I guess flowers are important.

I guess flowers are important for different human celebrations too, I mean, imagine a wedding or funeral without flowers, they come in handy for Valentine's day, and they do "pretty" up a garden, not to mention how awesome a field of flowering daisies, poppies, and daffodils can look.

If you have ever been to the Netherlands, thousands of different coloured tulips can be quite the sight as well.

But here's what struck me about those large Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings......the benevolence of them.

With so much malevolence about; wars, earthquakes, poverty, starvation, conflict, etc.etc. perhaps the existence of something beautiful and totally benevolent sharing these turbulent times with us can offer us a small measure of comfort?

Running low on finding a job opportunity, one day, in desperation I walked into a florist shop and asked what one needed to be able to get a job in a florist shop.

"Actually" the nice florist said "you need four years of study and a certificate".

Wow. I was flummoxed.

Flowers are  serious business obviously.

As I stood there in the shop among all the incredibly beautiful flowers dressed in the most gloriously coloured petals with their rich fragrances, for the first time in my life I really got how important  beauty is for the human soul.

Us humans are able to contribute beauty as well of course, but, much of what our human hands touch seem to end up rather tainted and less beautiful somehow.

In order to be able to really appreciate beauty for itself, sometimes it may be necessary to let go of pragmatism and utilitarian thinking and just be swept up, and drawn in, by the exhilarating experience of beauty.

In spite of ourselves, nature is still out there, providing for us so much benevolence and beauty that all we need to do, is to open our eyes and hearts and really see it.