Facing the Right Direction

I learned an amazing fact recently about sunflowers that has a lot to do with how to live a rich, centered, balanced life.

Imagine a field full of sunflowers. Can you see it in your mind? If you need a little help, the internet has lots of photos.

If the sun is out, take a second and see what you notice.

If you said, they’re all facing the same direction, you’re correct. And the direction they’re facing is always toward the sun. Each of their faces is upturned to capture as much sunshine as possible. They’re known as heliotropic because their heads follow the sun as it arcs through the sky.

In the morning sunflowers face east and as the day progresses, they end up facing west. Even more fantastic to me is that once the sun goes down, each sunflower turns and faces east again, waiting for the sun to come up in the morning.

What I find so compelling about this is that sunflowers know instinctively what their energy source is and orient themselves around it. They know the sun will feed them, so they follow it the whole day.

What if we oriented ourselves around what truly feeds and nourishes us?

What kind of life would that provide us?

The question that arises for me is, what is the best source of nourishment? I realize that what I choose will make all of the difference in my life. This idea makes me want to choose very carefully.

If you sat back in this moment, what would you choose?

There are a lot of things to pick from. Money, fame, job advancement, athletic excellence, social influence, strong relationships, popularity.

How do you decide what to choose? Maybe, you don’t want to choose only one. Maybe you want or need more. Maybe you want them all.

Thinking about my answer prompts me to consider whether the list is complete. Are there other things more important than the ones that first came to me?

It only takes a second to reveal my answer. None of these is what I want most. None of these will nourish me over the course of my life and I would be wise to look deeper.

So, I do and discover that what truly is the source of everything valuable in my life is love. If I connect to love in every situation, like the sunflowers connect to the sun, I will always have what I need and want. I will always be fulfilled.

Recently my nine-year-old grandson asked me a fascinating question. He was in the living room and called out to me in the kitchen asking, “What’s the most powerful thing in the world?”

I thought for a moment and said, “love”.

My thirteen-year-old granddaughter overheard both his question and my answer and said to me, “I knew you’d choose that.”

So, there it was, perhaps 30 seconds of elapsed time to reveal some magic and magnificence. He asked an incredibly important question and she reflected to me her awareness, her insight into me, with my answer. I felt ‘seen’. I was touched deeply by this impromptu exchange, and I thought about sunflowers and the way they move with the sun and recognized I am like them because I move to see and feel love.

Love centers me, balances me, and gives me everything I could ever hope for.

If I was ever asked, I would encourage anyone to find their sources of love and follow them throughout the day, then sit waiting for them to appear the next morning, like the sun gazing down on a field of sunflowers.