White Morning-glory
WHITE MORNING-GLORY

You never know when a train of thought will be set off, or what will trigger it. This week a white morning-glory blossom did it for me. That's it above.

Turns out that I'd already profiled this plant back in Querétaro -- it's Jacquemontia nodiflora -- but, still, this repeat encounter with the flower turned into something special.

That hot, dry, breezy day, somehow I was stunned by the effect of sunlight translucing through the corolla, while stamen shadows danced on the wind-shaken corolla-tube's walls. Just look how the flower's stigma atop the slender, white style splits into two arms exactly as a blossom in the genus Jacquemontia ought to.

That day I stood there on the road's hot asphalt next to a heap of "weeds" and stared and felt for the longest time, somehow very glad that that little flower was being so beautiful simply by being itself. And that white-flower experience got me to wondering: Why did Nature evolve us so that we feel good when we experience beautiful things?

Since typically we're programmed to feel good when we do natural things we have to do -- procreate, eat, rest when tired, etc. -- maybe experiencing beauty also is something we have to do, to be complete. But, what could there be in a white weed-flower resplendent in sunlight that could be important to us humans?

Maybe it's the flower's example that harmonization with one's environment of in the manner of "white-flower-in-sunlight" is beautifult. Maybe it's the flower's example of "fulfillment-without-striving," which certain materialistic cultures don't understand. Maybe it's the example that simplicity, as evidenced by the little white blossom, can usher forth transcendent radiance.

How revealing and how promising it is that a little white weed flower along a random road offers anyone willing to stop, look and feel guidance, and that accepting that guidance feels very good.