The Florida Flowers of Midnight
A message for the black sheep, outliers and outcasts:
Tonight in a quiet neighborhood somewhere in St Pete, my friend and I walked the streets looking for something we’d never seen before.
The flowers that only bloom after dark. The flowers that bloom when nothing else does. The flowers that only bloom for a short period out of every year, and during that period, only for a few hours, in the darkest hours of the night.
I had to see it. She had to see it. But it wasn’t just about seeing an anomaly.
I’ll share what I texted to a friend when I sent them pictures of these flowers after the fact:
“It reminded me that, perhaps you and I are like these flowers - people like us, we have the ability to bloom and be seen in the dark, and we have the ability to open and thrive when everything else closes down. Basically, the message is that we don’t have to fucking make sense to anybody else, and we don’t have to be like anybody else either.”
Very fitting for the times. I spoke on the period of Venus being invisible and the collective dark night of the soul in last nights podcast episode:
For those of you who have felt like a black sheep or an outlier your entire life, dig this:
These flowers are an anomaly. They are also teachers and reminders from Nature. They bloom very rarely, so they remind us of impermanence. They also do what no others do, they open and bloom not with the presence of the sun like most other plant life, they bloom in the dark, in the presence of the moon.
The reactions we observed in the people (shortly after we showed up, the whole neighborhood came out) were very telling:
Everyone came out of their homes and even drove from other locations to see these. They were admired and held in reverence and awe — why?
Because they are not only different, but they are extremely RARE. Everyone knew that they would be gone soon, so soon, and for that, it brought people together to simply witness life itself.
All of us will be gone soon in the grand scheme of things. Some sooner than others. Tomorrow is promised to no one. Imagine if we all treated one another this way. Because this is the truth, whether we choose to see it or not.
Most were in awe. However, there was one person who had a very different reaction.
Outliers, outcasts, black sheep, pay attention to this:
This man could not accept that flowers bloomed at night. My friend and I looked at each other and laughed, but understand when you are judged, made to feel small, invisible, defective, or worth nothing, likely this is happening:
It is not that those things are true, it is that your existence doesn’t make sense to certain minds, and because they can’t “figure it out”, they must deny it.
He said things like, “What is the reason for them blooming? They can’t be blooming. What is this, because of chemicals or something?”
It’s actually not that crazy, plants that bloom at night / under the moon are part of the nightshade family. That’s why they have that name.
It was interesting to see his reaction. He didn’t understand, so he became suspicious. He thought, it can’t be because this is what they do, this must be some unnatural man made thing, like chemicals.
He had a lot more to say, and he could not accept the beauty that was in front of his eyes, because it didn’t make sense to him. So he went into a mental frenzy.
Instead of seeing and accepting, he had to twist, reframe, and deny.
People do this to other people ALL THE TIME.
It can be hard if you have experienced this most of your life. First you are painted every single which way except the way you actually are, but your existence might be so troublesome to warped minds that you may be denied entirely — meaning you are treated as if you are a ghost, completely invisible.
No matter what you do, you will never be seen by people like this.
You could achieve all the things to achieve in this world, and you will still never be seen. You will never be enough — because blind eyes do not have the ability to see. Nothing more.
It’s not personal, although it can be beyond devastating when we do not understand this, and it can lead to a complex where we spend the rest of our lives obsessively trying to figure out what’s wrong with us to make sense of how we are treated, or things that have happened to us.
If one waits on the acknowledgement from others before they acknowledge themselves, one will die devastated and unfulfilled.
Imagine if those flowers all shut down and started questioning themselves just because a guy on the street couldn’t accept that they existed. What a senseless tragedy that would be! A loss of life, a loss of beauty, and a loss for everyone who comes out at night at the same time of year just to behold their beauty.
There are people who wait in anticipation all year for these flowers to bloom. And then there are people who seem to have brain malfunctions because it doesn’t add up with what all the other flowers are doing.
Same with people.
And yet, these flowers, they bloom regardless.
They do it when all else closes and withdraws.
They do it in conditions that people think aren’t possible, and still can’t quite explain why.
I suppose a botanist can, but none of us on the street knew why. It didn’t matter to us though. We saw them, and that was enough.
It was enough for me to send pictures of it to a friend who is struggling. It was enough to give myself and my friend I was there with some joy. It was enough to give me hope and raise my spirits after being in a lot of pain. They were a reminder, a mirror, a teacher, a lesson.
It’s also why I’m writing this to you now.
That’s what those flowers did. All of us who don’t add up with the conveyor belt cookie cutter image of what the machine asks us to look and act like, these flowers are a complete defiance of all that bullshit.
Light only shines in darkness.
Love this & those beautiful flowers! Thanks for sharing!!