Flowers (and authenticity) also emerge from cracks.
"You go to such lengths to look and have everything perfect and see how beautiful and unique that house looks with those flowers in the cracks."
Hello. Welcome to another post on The Void, where not everything always makes sense. Today I'm sharing a reflection that arose from seeing a house with beautiful flowers sprouting from the cracks in the concrete of its driveway, revealing a unique beauty. I've been writing this post for a while, searching for the perfect angle, but after so much thought, I decided to stop dragging it out and publish it with its cracks and imperfections. After all, that's what the essay is about. I hope it doesn't kill your brain cells. Remember to hit like, leave your comments and reflections, share it, and, if you haven't already, subscribe (it's free).
We've been killing ourselves searching for beauty and authenticity, even under every stone, desperate to find that one thing that defines them. And if we don't have them, we pretend we do. Each (new) invention sells us the idea that with its solution, we'll achieve uniqueness and be able to eliminate the cracks in our lives.
Those cracks that make us look "flawed" to others, and which once we manage to cover up, then we will reach our glory.
A while ago, while passing by a neighbor's house, I noticed a flowering plant growing between the cracks separating the concrete floor of her driveway. The flowers emanated a radiant, beautiful, and inviting yellow. Perhaps it was the beauty of these flowers, or my ability to escape my focus, which prompted the following thought:
You go to such lengths to look and have everything perfect and see how beautiful and unique that house looks with those flowers coming out of the cracks. They make it stand out, in a genuine and unpretentious way.
Perhaps it's not that we neglect ourselves and let the cracks become unfixable, but not every crack represents a structural issue. Working so hard to mend them when they often contribute to a person's unique beauty and character is precisely what makes us slaves to the search. And while flowers in the cracks aren't a nuisance to some, for others they're just another flaw to hide, another flaw to flee from.
In his essay entitled Can We Be Happy? Nemesio Canales (1878-1923) offers us the following lines, which, if we think about it carefully, can be applied to the topic of flowers between the cracks and to the subject of beauty and authenticity.
“Happiness, happiness... Where the hell is this divine treasure hidden, which no one can find, nor has anyone ever found it? You run into an old man and ask him; and out of every hundred old people, ninety-nine old people will first sigh deeply, and will immediately answer one of these two things: either that they lost it forever and it (happiness) was left behind, far behind, on some remote bend in the road they traveled, or that they never had it and are going to search for it in eternal rest, or in the eternal Eden promised to them by this or that religion. You run into a young man... and he will tell you that either he left it behind too, there in the distance of childhood, or that he is running, running endlessly in pursuit of it, with or without hope of catching up with it. And if you interrupt any child's play and manage to make him understand your question, surely either you will make no sense of the child's unconsciousness, or you will soon see him pointing toward the future with the classic words we have all uttered: “When I become a man…” It means that it is behind, or it is in front, or it is up, or it is down: everywhere, except at the point where we are1”.
Having worked for decades in an industry that promises beauty and authenticity, and therefore happiness (in the future, of course), I can attest to Canales's words. I'm reminded of all those people who didn't need to search for more beauty, authenticity, or for a new body. People whose flaws gave them their beauty, and who in that relentless search lost themselves.
I've seen how, for many, beauty ceased to be a feeling and became a goal to be achieved. Their physical and personal authenticity became a flaw to be filled. "When I reach my ideal weight," a client told me years ago. Obviously, in her mind, that would only happen when she managed to cover all her flaws with a new body and a fully realized life where her surface was unblemished. She was a victim of a cookie-cutter culture in which there is no room to be truly unique.
But since no cracks are not identical, how is it possible that by covering them all, with the same filler and paint as everyone else, we can achieve our unique beauty, especially when our cracks present no structural problem, and if we kill the flowers that grow from them?
I don't know if this is worth saying, or if my experience isn't a good example, but the most beautiful and genuine people I've met haven't had more cracks on their surface because they don't have room for more. Yet, they’ve even picked some of the flowers in their cracks to give to me. The less these people boast about their perfection, and the less they seek to push me to achieve their greatness, the more I like them.
These people have had large bellies, flabby bodies, stretch marks, painful and dark pasts, and gazes that reveal their traumas. They don't hide their cracks and have had the good fortune to unconsciously manifest what the Japanese call Wabi-Sabi, or the beauty of imperfection. This philosophy accepts the cracks and wear and tear as part of the process of life and the unique beauty of things (and people).
Maybe that's what made the flowers in the cracks of my neighbor's house look so beautiful. They made it feel like a home, not a hotel. Those flowers showed a unique and genuine place amidst so much superficial perfection, renovation, and paint.
Anthology of Literary Texts. (1994). University of Puerto Rico Press.
Great stuff, man.
Haven’t finished but I HAVE TO SHARE(Nemesio Canales compels me to do so)