in a non-rigorous scientific-community-questioned experiment back around 2000, a japanese researcher exposed water molecules to positive and negative input – commentary, music, sounds that are easily sorted into validating or dissing, softer reassurances or harsh aggression. the water molecules that had been privy to positivity turned into beautiful ice crystals while the water molecules that had been subjected to negativity froze into ugly shapes. the theory was that vibrational input – all the energy input – played a part in the effect on water, and the experiment posited a direct connect to how vibrational energy affects us as people.
whether or not this experiment had all the controls and data and science it purported doesn’t really matter to me. what matters is that this makes sense.
being kind, generous, positive, encouraging to someone, stroking someone with words of goodness is entirely the opposite of berating someone, demeaning them, being hostile toward them. clearly.
when you walk into the trader joe’s grocery store nearest us, the first thing you see – on your right – are bins of flowers. it is a wall of color, of beauty. we slowly browse through them all – so many are different than what your would find at a typical florist, these are intriguing and, obviously, very popular – as there are shoppers with armloads of these bouquets.
we haven’t bought flowers often there, though i have stopped and admired them each time we have entered the store. flowers weren’t in the budget so i enjoyed them at the store and thought about one day starting a new tradition of having fresh flowers around us, any time of year. my sweet poppo would buy my momma grocery store flowers for the little table in the foyer of their house and she loved that tradition, the ritual of changing the flowers, of having beauty right by the front door.
the last two times we went – which isn’t too often because it’s about 40 minutes away – we picked up a bundle of flowers. last time we picked up red hypericum, this time purple eryngium. each time we brought home a little posey of something uniquely different to us, something just simply so pretty we couldn’t pass it by. despite other shoppers leaving with multiple bundles, we have been quite pleased with ourselves, carrying out of the store a sweet bouquet of infamous tj flowers.
at home – in a ball jar on the bistro table by the windows in the sunroom – we enjoy our flowers every single day, for this is the place we sit most often. and every single day that we have enjoyed these flowers – this $4.99 investment in ourselves – we have felt the positive self-message that we are worthy of them.
it doesn’t take much. tiny affirmations. words of support, assurance, validation, self-belief. little gestures. big empowering. everything in between.
if i had to guess, i would think that having trader joe’s flowers around might be a catalyst – one among many others – for becoming beautiful crystals. that – even more than the 60% of our bodies that are water – our body is 100% beautiful. and in the overwhelming presence of that kind of beauty, we are most alive.
“we begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.” (anne lamott)
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read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY
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