The man who forgot how to pick flowers

Have you ever looked at someone you thought you knew and not recognised them?

There's a term for it: "Prosopagnosia (Greek: "prosopon" = "face", "agnosia" = "not knowing"), also called face blindness, It's a disorder of face perception where the ability to recognise faces is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing (e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual functioning (e.g., decision making) remain intact."

That happened to me today. I looked out a window and saw something I wasn't supposed to see.  At least I think I wasn't supposed to see it. I thought I recognised someone but when I looked at their face I had no idea who they were.  At first I laughed about it but eventually the laughing stopped.

It's the second time something like that has happened to me. Six months ago I forgot how to pick flowers. I don't know if there is a term for that.  There is a term for the fear of flowers:Anthrophobia, but that's not the same thing. I love flowers, I just forgot how to pick them.

Until a month ago when I finally remembered. I was walking to my car and there in my garden were brilliant white flowers.  For the first time in months I knew I had to do something with them. I had an urge to cut them and tie them together. So I did. I went back inside, got a pair of scissors and snipped them at the stems. But I had nothing to tie them up with. So I went back into the flat found an old white shoe lace, cut it in half and tied them together. And when I was done I realised that I had picked some flowers - for the first time in months. They weren't as brilliant as I initially thought. They looked scraggly and unkept - undeserving of being picked almost. I had a pang of guilt. I had picked them too soon. But then as I tilted them towards the light it struck me - their seeming insignificance made them beautiful. These were not brilliant red roses from a florist fed on a genetically modified diet. They were mine, planted in my garden and grown wildly on a diet of Joburg rainstorms and not very much else.

It seems trivial, but for a man who has forgotten to pick flowers doing so on the spur of the moment takes a lot of courage.  Most people wouldn't even give it a second thought but if, like me, you have chosen not to do it for fear of being pricked by a thorn, finding the strength to do so in spite of yourself is difficult.

In an earlier post I spoke about moments and how life changing they can be. I also spoke about being thankful for the moments. I am thankful for the moment that I finally remembered how to pick flowers.


DISCLAIMER: I was going to start this with the line: There once was a man who forgot how to pick flowers. But this is not a fairytale, it has no ending.